The Aramaic of Daniel: K. A. Kitchen

K.A. Kitchen, The Aramaic of Daniel, D. J. Wiseman, ed., Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel.
London: The Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 31-79.

The Aramaic of Daniel
K. A. Kitchen*
[p.31]
INTRODUCTORY
This subject has been closely studied by two or three generations of modern scholars
1
S. R.
Driver,
2
R. D. Wilson;
3
G. R. Driver,
4
W. Baumgartner,
5
H. H. Rowley;
6
J. A. Montgomery,
7
H. H. Schaeder,
8
F. Rosenthal,
9
and various others. Nevertheless, there is today ample scope
for reassessment. The inscriptional material for Old and Imperial
10
Aramaic and later phases
of the language is constantly growing. One need only mention the Brooklyn and
* My thanks go to Mr. David Clines, Department of Biblical History, University of Sheffield, for kindly reading
the manuscript of this paper in the light of his own investigations, and for comments and corrections; also to Mr.
Alan Millard, Librarian at Tyndale House, Cambridge, for some additional references.
[p.32]
Borchardt-Driver documents published in 1953 and 1954 or the Aramaic documents from
Qumran and other cave-sites of Graeco-Roman Palestine. Furthermore, some earlier views
require revision in the light of facts hitherto unknown or neglected.
In dealing with the book of Daniel, theological presuppositions are apt to colour even the
treatment and dating of its Aramaic.
11
The only fair way to proceed is to leave open the whole
period c. 540-160 BC until the end of any inquest on the Aramaic, as far as date is concerned.

1
See F. Rosenthal, The Aramaistische Forschung seit Th. Nldekes Verffentlichungen (1939, repr. 1964), pp.
60-71. Throughout this paper no attempt is made to give the luxuriant bibliography of Aramaic either inside or
outside of Daniel. Besides Rosenthal down to 1938-1939, cf. (e.g.) J. J. Koopmans, Aramische Chrestomathie,
I-II (1962).
2
LOT
9
, pp. 502-504, 508, and xxxiv-xxxviii; S. R. Driver, Daniel (Cambridge Bible, 1900), pp. lix-lx.
3
In Biblical and Theological Studies by the Members of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary...
(1912), pp. 261-306.
4
JBL, XLV, 1926, pp. 110-119, 323-325.
5
ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp. 81-133.
6
AOT and indirectly HSD. In English, at least, Rowleys book of 1929 is a classic statement from the point of
view of a second century date for the Aramaic of Daniel, with a wealth of data, and was the last substantial work
on the subject to appear in English. Therefore his book has been taken as a convenient starting-point at certain
junctures in this study. While Rowleys failure adequately to recognize the distinction between orthography and
phonetics (and to take any note of relevant ancient literary methods) raises grave doubts of his results, it is a
pleasure to acknowledge his convenient and careful marshalling of so much of the basic material at issue.
7
J. A. Montgomery, The Book of Daniel (International Critical Commentary, 1927), pp. 15-20.
8
Iranische Beitrge I, 1930, being Heft 5, 6. Jahr of the Schriften der Knigsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft
(Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse). Pages are quoted both by Heft and as book.
9
See work cited n.1, above.
10
I use Imperial Aramaic merely as one possible English equivalent among Several others for the usual
German term Reichsaramische.
11
Thus, on inhaltlichen Kriterien, content (Rosenthal, Aramaistishe Forschung, p. 71 apud J. Lindner,
Zeitschrift fr Katholische Theologie, LIX, 1935, pp. 503-545; H. L. Ginsberg, JAOS, LXII, 1942, p. 231 end,
apud Schaeder), i.e. prejudging the book a priori as pseudepigraphic. Wilson (n. 3, above) and Rowley (n. 6,
above) represent opposite viewpoints.
In this study, the Aramaic of Daniel is examined compactly in relation to (a) vocabulary, (b)
orthography and phonetics, and (c) general morphology and syntax. This enquiry is
necessarily limited to the main points at issue, without digressing into secondary literature or
investigating the details of all the older discussions. It is not a total presentation of work done
or of material available; the entire analysed word-list of Biblical Aramaic is omitted, and also
detailed references to the Nabataean and Palmyrene data (sparse in any case) and Targums.
12
A. VOCABULARY
1. Basic West Semitic. For the purpose of this study, the entire word-stock of Biblical
Aramaic, in particular of that in Daniel, has been listed and analysed against the comparative
background of objectively-dated inscriptions and papyri in Old and Imperial Aramaic, and
cognate West Semitic and Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian).
13
The result is that nine-
tenths of the vocabulary is attested in texts of the fifth century BC
14
or earlier. The slender
one-tenth remaining consists of words so far found only in sources
[p.33]
later than the fifth Century BC (e.g. Nabataean, Palmyrene or later Aramaic dialects), or so far
not attested externally at all.
The meaning of these facts in either case is clear. Among the nine-tenths, words found in Old
and Imperial Aramaic documents in the ninth to fifth centuries BC would in themselves allow
of any date for the Aramaic of Daniel from the sixth century BC onwards. Words found in
other early West Semitic texts
15
as well as in the Aramaic of Daniel are to be taken as being
not merely early Aramaic but as common, early West Semitic, not even peculiar to Aramaic.
Words found in Akkadian may be relevant in one of three or four main ways: they may be
taken as Common Semitic; they may indicate old West Semitic terms borrowed by Akkadian
(e.g., as in the Mari texts of the eighteenth century BC);
16
they may represent Aramaic words
so far only attested as loan-words in later Akkadian (Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian,
eighth-fifth centuries BC), or else may be Akkadian vocables borrowed as loan-words by Old
or Imperial Aramaic and so turn up in our text. Whichever the individual case, the result
ultimately is the sameall such words could obviously occur at any time from the sixth
century BC onwards.

12
A sufficiency of this later material is included in AOT, passim.
13
Apart from the Ararnaic papyri (which also contain Persian words), what follows principally concerns the
main Semitic word-stock of the Aramaic of Daniel. It is regretted that the detailed analysis of the vocabulary of
Biblical Aramaic cannot be included with this papereven set out compactly, it would require up to forty pages
in small quarto.
14
The accidents of preservation and discovery have so far produced very many more Aramaic papyri for the fifth
century BC than for the sixth, the upper time-limit for Daniel. However, attestation of a Semitic word in a fifth-
century document is ordinarily a sufficient presumption for its existence and use in the late sixth century BC.
The onus of proof would lie on anyone who might prefer to believe the contrary. The sixth-century P. Meissner
differs in no essentials from fifth-century documents.
15
Including: Ugaritic (fourteenth-thirteenth centuries BC), Canaanite glosses in the Amarna tablets (fourteenth
century BC), Phoenician, Hebrew and Moabite inscriptions (tenth century onwards).
16
Good examples, cf. E. A. Speiser, JBL, LXXIX, 1960, pp. 157-163; M. Noth, Die Ursprnge des alten Israel
im Lichte neuer Quellen (1961), pp. 14-22, 34-40 (on which see D. O. Edzard, ZA, LVI, NF XXII, 1964, pp.
142-149); A. Malamat, JAOS, LXXXII, 1962, pp. 143-150.
Turning to the one-tenth of unattested and so far late-attested words, two interpretations are
theoretically possible for the latter class. One may assume that they are genuinely late
words, and therefore bring down the date of the Aramaic of Danielor of their introduction
into that Aramaicto a suitably late date. One may with equal justification assume that in
fact this is the familiar vicious fallacy of negative evidence
17
that these words may yet turn
up in early sources, so disproving their apparently late date.
18
Otherwise-unattested words,
of course, cannot serve as
[p.34]
dating evidence at all. Where nine-tenths of the vocabulary is clearly old-established (fifth
century BC and earlier), it is a fair assumption that the lack of attestation of the odd tenth
represents nothing more than the gaps in our present knowledgegaps liable to be filled by
new material in the course of time.
19
Hence, as far as the main (i.e. Semitic) vocabulary is concerned, we have no warrant whatever
to draw any conclusion about the date of Daniel from its Aramaic except to say that any date
from the sixth century BC onward is possible.
20
2. Hebrew and Akkadian Loan-words. However, separate consideration must be given to
foreign loan-words in Biblical Aramaic. These are attributable to Hebrew, Akkadian, Persian
and Greek sources. Hebraisms in Biblical Aramaic require no considerationits writers were
Hebrews, one expects them to betray this, and such Hebraisms have no bearing on date.
Akkadian words in Aramaic are also of very limited value in this connection, for Aramaean
penetration of Mesopotamia from the Middle Euphrates down to southern Babylonia persisted
from the twelfth century BC (Tiglath-pileser I)
21
for six or seven hundred years before the
period of the late sixth-mid-second centuries BC that is our concern here. During that long
period there was ample time for Aramaic words to enter Akkadian, and for Akkadian words to
penetrate Aramaic. From the eighth century BC, Aramaic enjoyed official recognition in

17
See my Ancient Orient and Old Testament, section I.B.5 (iib). It is no unusual occurrence in Egyptian, for
example, for words once known only from texts of the Graeco-Roman age suddenly to turn up a millennium or
two earlier in Old, Middle or Late Egyptian texts. For Semitic, cf. (e.g.) the next notes.
18
A random example or two from Semitic must suffice here. Sixty years ago, /m/ wine, in Biblical Aramaic
and Hebrew could be dismissed as late in the latter (cf. BDB, p. 1093a, s.v.). But the word is now attested in
Ugaritic (fourteenth-thirteenth century BC; UM, III, no. 713) and also in Mari Akkadian (M. L. Burke, Archives
Royales de Mari, XI (1963), p. 133, 11). Or take o/, be fair, acceptable, in the Aramaic of Daniel, also in
Hebrew, labelled as rare and mostly late (BDB, p. 1117, s.v.). This word occurs at least twice in the Ahiqar
papyrus of the fifth century BC (lines 92, 108 and perhaps 159), once in the mid eighth century BC (Sfir stela
III, line 29), and as a proper name (like Shiprah of Ex. 1:15) back in the eighteenth century BC in the slave-list
of Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 (W. C. Hayes, A Papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom (1955), p. 96; W. F.
Albright, JAOS, LXXIV, 1954, p. 229). Rare it may be; late, it is not.
19
Cf. previous note; a good example is the supposedly late yt of Biblical Aramaic turning up in an Aramaic
papyrus published in 1953, cf. below, p. 69.
20
When such vocabulary is common to both early sources (Old Aramaic; papyri) and to late ones (e.g.
Targums), this does not a priori date Daniel any closer to (say) the Targums than to the Old Aramaic texts or the
papyri; it could be at either end, or anywhere in between, or even slightly before or after (seen strictly from this
vocabulary point-of-view).
21
See E. Forrer in E. Ebeling and B. Meissner (eds.), Reallexikon den Assyriologie, I, 1928, pp. 131-139: Aramu.
Assyria.
22
Thus, if one combines the words of possible Akkadian origin given by Rowley in
AOT, pp. 134-135, with those given by Rosenthal, GBA, 188, 190 (pp. 57-58, 59), one
obtains a total of some 37 words and phrases,
[p.35]
including |
c
/-/m (but not /m) and
e
br-nhr as phrases. One of these 37 is probably not
Akkadian (assa/na, in Ezra only) but Old Persian (with Rosenthal, GBA, 189). Of the
remaining 36 words, 15 occur only in Ezra, leaving 21 in Daniel, 16 of them in Daniel alone.
The vocabulary analysis already mentioned would indicate that practically all of these 21
words are either attested in Imperial Aramaic well beyond Daniel, or have a long history
prejudicial to their entering Aramaic only in the sixth century BC (or later) or occur already in
Old Aramaic or West Semitic, or in Hebrew outside Daniel (ruling out special usage there). In
other words, the Akkadian loan-words are probably simply part of the multicoloured fabric of
Aramaic, and have no real bearing on the date of the language of Daniel within the sixth to the
second centuries BC. Only as
c
oa, enchanter (Akkadian as|oa), is restricted so far to the
Hebrew (1:20; 2:2) and Aramaic (2:10, 27; 4:4; 5:7, 11, 15) of Daniel, outside of Akkadian
itself, and is not attested (so Rowley) in the later Aramaic of, for example, the Targums. This
might speak for a direct loan from Akkadian into the Hebrew and Aramaic usage of a Hebrew
in Babylon in the mid-sixth century BCbut it is so isolated that as a single word it cannot
constitute proof. A single occurrence of so in some future discovery of a West Semitic text or
Aramaic document would soon dispel any such assumption. Hence, for dating purposes, the
Akkadian words in the Aramaic of Daniel must be accorded the same status of non liquet as
the rest of the Semitic vocabulary.
3. Persian Loan-words. The Persian words in the Aramaic of Daniel are some 19 in number.
Rowley gave 20 such words.
23
From his list, zmn and srbl should probably be omitted,
24
and
to it o/,s (a garment) be added.
25
With these changes, 13 out of the 20 words are attested in
later literature, particularly the Targums,
26
while
[p.36]

22
See R. A. Bowman, JNES, VII, 1948, pp. 75-76; in 729 BC, tribute for Tiglath-pileser III is shown as recorded
by an Aramaean scribe with pen and parchment alongside his cuneiform colleague; note also for 701 BC, 2 Ki.
18:13-37, Is. 36:1-22.
23
AOT, p. 138.
24
Zmn, time, is probably derived from Akkadian simnu (refs. in KB, p. 1972a), rather than from Old Persian
zurvan (m = rv seems far-fetched). Srbl, trousers (?), is of obscure origin, but known to the fifth-century papyri
(AP, no. 42:9). It can hardly be native to Old Persian, as the latter does not use l except in foreign words that
already contain l, and only in those not assimilated (OP, p. 8, 6, and especially p. 33, 107; cf. W. Brandenstein
and M. Mayrhofer, Handbuch des Altpersischen (1964), pp. 32-33, 35, 28, 32).
25
With F. Rosenthal, GBA, p. 59, 189; KB, p. 1112b, after Nyberg.
26
Rowleys twelve words are reduced to ten by omission of zmn and srbl; but these losses are more than made
up by (i) o/,s which also occurs in Talmudic literature (BDB, p. 1108), (ii) gdbr which is merely a variant of gzbr
and should not count separately (see below, pp. 61-62), and (iii) dt, law, which is now attested in the Qumran
Targum to Job (see J. van den Ploeg, Le Targum de Job de la Grotte II de Qumran (1962), p. 7where ptgm
also occurs).
6 of them so far are not.
27
(In the Aramak of Ezra, Rowley listed 9 words, which would
become 8 with the omission of zmn as in Daniel. But to this 8 may be added a further 5 words
(with Rosenthal, 189-190 et al.): sprn, prs(t)k, rn, tdr, rw. Of these 13 words, 5
occur in later (e.g. Targumic) literature as survivals, that is, Rowleys five, minus zmn, but
plus dt instead.)
In the Aramaic papyri collected together by Cowley,
28
Rowley with him would find (p. 139)
some 26 Persian words of which only 2 occur in the Targums. He further noted that only 2 of
these words (t(y)pt, zn) recurred in Daniel; and 3 (zd, gnz, ntwn) in Ezra, probably 4
(adding rn),
29
as preferred here. All this led him to observe that (p. 139) a very large
proportion of the Persian words found in Daniel is known to have persisted in Aramaic until
Targurnic times [i.e. until the first century BC and later], while a very small proportion of
those found in Egyptian Aramaic so persisted. So far so good, on the facts so far adduced.
Rowley then interpreted these facts as follows (p. 139): In this matter [survival of words in
Daniel], therefore, Biblical Aramaic... stands very much nearer to the Targums than do the
Papyri. And later in the same paragraph, It thus appears that in the matter of Persian loan-
words Biblical Aramaic is also very much nearer to the Targums than it is to the Papyri.
These inferences are open to question on various grounds.
(1) As generally admitted, the Persian vocabulary in the Aramaic of Daniel amounts to barely
a score of words. When the material at hand consists of words by the thousand or even in
hundreds, there is some hope of sound results, but a mere score or so of words is altogether
too fragile a basis for statistical argument.
30
This will become more evident from what
follows.
(2) If one compares the Persian vocabulary of Biblical Aramaic with what the Targums
containas Rowley does in the interests of a second-century date for Danielone should
also compare that vocabulary equally with what is found in Imperial Aramaic docu-
[p.37]
ments of the sixth-fifth centuries BC.
31
This omission must now be rectified.
Of the 19 words here accepted as Persian in the Aramaic of Daniel, 8 or g occur in Imperial
Aramaic and contemporary sources. In Imperial Aramaic, we find ptgm, zd, zn, t(y)pt,
gzbr,
32
and [rz]
33
(all in the Elephantine papyri from Egypt); and via Elamite,
34
/drpn, dt,

27
The proportion is thus now 12:7 instead of 12:8 as in Rowleys time. More Qumran material could easily
increase the body of such survivals; the new Job Targum contains some other Persian words, e.g. dht, desert,
known neither to Biblical Aramaic nor to the papyri as yet (van der Ploeg, loc. cit.).
28
AP.
29
See for this word C. G. Tuland, JNES, XVII, 1958, pp. 275-274, and as Old Persian, H. S. Nyberg, Le Monde
Oriental, XXIV, 1930, pp. 538-139. But cf. also E. G. Kraeling, BMAP, p. 101, n.6.
30
A fact realized at least in part by Rowley (p. 136: While in literature so scanty as our texts, all arguments on
Vocabulary are liable to be precarious...), but not sufficiently. It is clearly stated by F. Rosenthal, Aramaistische
Forschung, p. 63, in another connection.
31
In practice, mainly of the fifth century BC, due simply to the accidents of preservation and discovery.
32
Of which gdbr is merely a variant; see below, pp. 61-62.
33
Ahiqar, 141, restoredbut what else of two letters would fit? If this word be omitted, then we have eight, not
nine words here.
Dt, law, decree, also occurs in Akkadian cuneiform as early as the second, sixteenth and
thirty-fifth years of Darius I, and databara in a later group of documents.
35
In other words,
nearly half of the Persian words in the Aramaic of Daniel are attested (mainly in Aramaic
itself) in the sixth-fifth centuries BC. Or, nearly half of the Persian words would speak just as
much for a sixth-fifth century date as would the 13 words found in the Targums for a second-
century date. Now, of the 8 or 9 words here listed as occurring early, 4 or 5 (ptgm, gzbr, dt,
zn, [rz]) recur in the Targums and 4 (zd, t(y)pt, hdrpn, dtbr) do not. In other words, on
Rowleys kind of reasoning, half of these 8 or 9 words would stand nearer to the Targums and
half to the sixth-fifth centuries BCbut as those recurring in the Targums also occur in
documents of the sixth-fifth centuries BC, could these documents, too, stand nearer to the
Targums than to other documents of their own date? Clearly they could not; the plain fact is
that all of these 8 or 9 words came into Aramaic (and Akkadian and Elamite) in the sixth-fifth
centuries BC, and some of them happen to be retained four centuries later (cf. (4) below). The
occurrence of 4 or 5 of them in both Persian imperial documents and Targums merely leaves
the date of Daniels Aramaic where it was before: in the sixth to second centuries BC.
(Similarly with Ezras Aramaic. Of the 13 words here, 9 occur in Imperial Aramaic or
contemporary sources (ptm, perhaps in Akkadian), only 4 so far do not (prs(t)k,
36
prgn,
drzd, tdr). That
[p.38]
is, three-quarters of the Persian words in the Aramaic of Ezra are attested in the sixth-fifth
century BC documents available, and speak for an early date. Of these 9 words, 4 recur in the
Targums (ptgm, gnz, gnzbr, dt) but 5 do not (sprn, rn, ntwn, rw, ptm).
37
In other
words, again, half of the words are early only, and half both early and late, with the same
result as in Daniel, i.e. sixth-fifth to second centuries BC for scope in dating.)
(3) As for the Aramaic of Daniel having only 2 Persian words (and that of Ezra, 4)
38
in
common with the Aramaic of the fifth-century papyri from Egypt, much new material has
become available since 1929, and permits of some interesting comparisons.
In the eighty-seven documents collected by Cowley,
39
some twenty-seven words were isolated
as probably Persian. Since then, two further (but much smaller) collections of Aramajc
documents have been published, by Kraeling in 1953
40
and Driver in 1954-1957,
41
besides a
trickle of lesser items.
42

34
Both under Darius I; for the view that treasury-orders at Persepolis were turned into Aramaic and then Elamite
(hence Old Persian words in these texts would come via Aramaic), see PTT, chapter 2, especially pp. 27 ff.,
nuanced by G. G. Cameron, JNES, XVII, 1958, p. 163.
35
CAD, 3/D, pp. 122-123. These, too, are likely to be indirect evidence for dt, dtbr in Aramaic in so far as the
latter language was used as intermediary between Persian officials and cuneiform scribes in Babylonia. Dta is,
of course, directly attested from Darius I onwards in actual Old Persian texts (OP, p. 189).
36
This word is probably also attested within the Persian period in Akkadian as iprasakku (CAD, 7/I-J, pp. 165-
166). This would give Ezra fourteen words attested early and only three not (so far).
37
One word (prgn) so far only in Ezra and Targums (apart from biblical Hebrew, left out of account in this
study, except where cited).
38
AOT, p. 139, but including rn; in fact, the proportions are quite different: Daniel, five or six words in the
papyri and three more in parallel material; and Ezra, eight in the papyri and one probably in the parallel
materialcf. above, pp. 37f.
39
I.e. AP, nos. 1-83, plus Ahiqar, Behistun-text, and two documents (A; B + C) in Appendix, pp. 317-319.
40
BMAP.
The Kraeling series comprises seventeen documents (four very fragmentary), practically all
legal texts. As might be expected, they contain numerically fewer Persian words than the
Cowley corpus11, of which (bygdn, hnbg, hngyt, rn) occur in Cowley, 1 in Driver and
Cowley (the ubiquitous kr), 1 in the Talmud,
43
and 5 (hpt/pt, hnpn, drng, drmy,
44
zt)
45
nowhere else. In even so few documents, half the Persian words are otherwise unattested in
contemporary records!
The Driver series consists of thirteen letters and various lesser fragments. The bulk of these
letters came from Babylon (and perhaps Susa) to Egypt, sent by the Persian Arsames, satrap
of Egypt (while absent from Egypt) and three of his adjutants. This small
[p.39]
group of documents contains no less than 26 Persian words
46
three-quarters as many as the
entire Cowley collection of eighty-seven documents! Nor is this all. Of those 26 words, 19 are
entirely flew to Imperial Aramaic, 2 are shared with Cowley and Kraeling (kr, pt), and only
another 3 words with the Cowley series (gnz, hmrkry, hndyz), and 2 more in other sources
(sprn, ptgm). One of the new words (srwyt, punishment) recurs in a slightly different
spelling (rw, probably to be taken as rw originally, initial in assimilated to shin?) in Ezra
(7:26, banishment).
47
Five others of the new words recur in the Talmud (bg, domain; dn,
gift; ptkr, image; gnz, treasury; ptgm, decree
48
). In other words, the Driver documents
show as many affinities in their Persian vocabulary with the Talmud (3 words; plus gnz and
ptgm attested early and late) as with other records of the fifth century BC (five items in
Cowley and Kraeling)but no-one would use such statistics to prove that the Driver
documents should be placed half-way chronologically between the fifth and second centuries
BC (c. 250?) on such a basis!
49
Ezra is in a far more convincing position with his 9 Persian
words in sixth-fifth century sources out of only 13 (and 1 word unattested so far except in
Biblical Hebrew and the Targums), than are the Driver documents with only 5 or 7
contemporaneously attested Persian words out of 26 (and 3 words unattested elsewhere until
the Talmud) Likewise, Daniel with 8 or 9 Persian words in sixth-fifth century sources (5 or 6
actually in the papyri) out of 21 words (and 7 words unattested until the Targums) compares
perfectly well with the 5 or 7 words in the sixth-fifth centuries out of 26 (3, only in Talmud)
of the Driver documentsthese latter have less in the late sources only, but less in the early
documents also!
The whole of this section (3) simply throws into relief the following facts. (i) With only a
score or so Persian words in each writing or group of documents, statistics are virtually
worthless. (ii) The supposedly few Persian words common to the Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra
and that of the eighty-seven papyri in Cowley prove only that our knowledge of the total

41
G. R. Driver, Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century BC (1954) and abridged and revised version 1957).
42
And others yet to be published, e.g. the fifth-century Aramaic papyri from Tuna el-Gebel (Hermopolis West)
in Middle Egypt (cf. M. Kamil, Revue de lHistoire Juive en gypte, I, 1947, pp. 1-3).
43
Mgw, magian, in AP, p. 254: Behistun text, line 60, cf. M. Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud
II 1926, p. 727a/b.
44
Unless this word is Greek? Cf. below, pp. 46, 47.
45
This word, J. De Menasce, BO, XI, 1954, p. 161; LAP, p. 38.
46
Excluding, as throughout this discussion, personal and place names.
47
N.B. ri in Qrfrom rwy(t)?
48
M. Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud I, pp. 134b, 326b, II, p. 1254b.
49
And it is as striking that the Kraeling legal documents have barely half their Persian vocabulary in common
with the other Elephantine documents collected in Cowley.
impact of Old Persian upon Imperial Aramaic (and its continuations) is grossly inadequate,
when one small group of closely similar documents yields 50 per cent new
[p.40]
Persian loan-words, and another and separate group (from the East) 19 out of 26 words new
(c. 80 per cent). (iii) It should be noted that in fact several more words in the Aramaic of both
Daniel and Ezra are common to them and the Aramaic papyri (besides other documents) than
was allowed by Rowley in 1929. (iv) When words are attested outside of Daniel (or Ezra)
both in the sixth-fifth century texts and in the late (Targumic/Talniudic) sources, this proves
only that these words had along life in Aramaic, and in themselves leave open the whole
period of the sixth-second centuries BC for Daniel. Words attested only in Daniel (or Ezra)
and, say, the Targums can be balanced by other words occurring , only in Daniel (or Ezra) and
the sixth-fifth century documentseach represents merely negative evidence for the periods
unattested, and hence is useless for specific dating purposes; they cancel each other out. This
matter of survivals must now be further considered.
(4a). From the preceding, it should be plainly evident that Persian words in Daniel that
survive in Targums or Talmud prove only that the words in question could have been used as
easily by a writer of Aramaic in the second century BC as by one in the sixth or fifth century
BC. It is unjustifiable to infer therefrom (with Rowley, p. 139) that Biblical Aramaic is
nearer, i.e. chronologically, to the Targums than to the papyri. The numerical prepon-
derance of 13 such words in Daniel as opposed to 5 in Ezra or 7 in Cowley, Kraeling and
Driver has thus no necessary bearing on the date of Daniel at all. Words must be weighed, not
merely counted.
50
As already stated, the impact of Old Persian upon Imperial Aramaic was considerable. The
Persian kings appointed Persian and Median officials to govern their empire, and Aramaic
was the means of communication between these and the polyglot nations so ruled. In the
administrative sphere, the impact was intensenote the list of about 100 Old Persian words
in the eighty-four Elamite money-order tablets from the Persepolis Treasury published by
Cameron,
51
to which still more may be added,
52
not least when 2000 more Persepolis tablets
(fortifications archive) are eventually published.
53
The effect on Aramaic must have been the
greater, as its use was infinitely wider than Elamite. In the two centuries between c. 540 BC
and c. 330 BC many such words had
[p.41]
ample time not merely to enter Aramaic but to become a regular part of it, assimilated in fact.
Thus, when Alexander and his Macedonians supplanted the Persian rulers, Aramaic-speaking
peoples would continue to use those Persian words that had lodged securely in Aramaic
usage. A fair number of words would drop awaythose for institutions and practices that
ceased with Persian rule, or received new, Greek names under the Macedonian kings, for
example.

50
Cf. F. Rosenthal, Aramaistische Forschung, p. 63.
51
PTT, Texts 1-84 (no. 85 is an Akkadian stray), and list of Old Persian words on pp. 42-43.
52
E.g. nidani, pitgam, karnuvaka, rasakara, garda ( pati), fratama, pansuka (G. G. Cameron, JNES, XVII,
1958, pp. 161-162, 165, n.8, 9).
53
By R. T. Hallock; cf. JNES, XVII, 1958, pp. 256-257.
The scope of Persian words borrowed during the Persian Empire must also have been very
broadfrom specialized technical terms and titles from administration, law and military,
through names of specific cultural elements (clothes, materials, etc.) down to apparently
ordinary sorts of words like zn, kind, ptgm, message, etc.
54
Furthermore, the almost
unconscious assumption
55
that Persian words would take some time to penetrate into Aramaic
(i.e. well after 539 BC) is erroneous.
56
The Persepolis Treasury tablets run from the 30th year
of Darius I to the 7th of Artaxerxes I, while those yet to be published from the fortifications
archive go back to the 11th to 28th years of Darius 1.
57
(Akkadian was much less receptive to
Old Persian loan-words (so far as is known), but as already seen, dta, law, decree, occurs in
years 2, 16 and 35 of Darius 1.
58
) Had we similar Aramaic and Elamite documents for Cyrus
and Cambyses, the same result might be anticipated. In other words, if a putative Daniel in
Babylon under the Persians (and who had briefly served them) were to write a book some
time after the third year of Cyrus (Dn. 10: 1), then a series of Persian words is no surprise.
Such a person in the position of close
[p.42]
contact with Persian administration that is accorded to him in the book would have to
acquireand use in his Aramaicmany terms and words from his new Persian colleagues
(just like the Elamite scribes of Persepolis), from the conquest by Cyrus onwards.
(4b). It is necessary, also, to note what words are involved in practice, and not merely how
many. Given the two centuries of unhindered Persian penetration of the Aramaic language (c.
540-330 BC), one cannot be surprised that such ordinary words as zn, kind; rz, secret;
nbrt, lamp; ndn, sheath, body; nbzb, gift, should be assimilated and survive later. The
same applies to items of apparel (hnmk, necklace; pty, shirt(?)), and words of such wide
application as ptgm, word; dt, law, decree. Hdm, limb, came from legal usage
59
(and gnz,
treasure, in Ezra, from administration), as in Daniel, but is an ordinary word in the Targums.
The survival of these 10 words (plus one in Ezra) can of itself prove nothing about Daniels
date. Three words remain over (the first in early sources as well as the Targums): gzbr/gdbr,
kr(w)z, srk: treasurer, herald, chief minister. These are administrative titlesbut for
obvious and basic functions. Any Ancient Near Eastern state had treasurers and chief
ministers, and courts their heralds also.
60
The non-occurrence so far of srk and krz
60a
in early

54
Elamite in the Persepolis Treasury texts similarly borrowed quite ordinary words as well as technical and
other terms (PTT, p. 19, n.125). It should be noted that these so-called ordinary words in most cases probably
came in at first as technical or cultural words, but became everyday terms in Aramaic. Thus, ndn, sheath, may
come initially from military parlance; rz, secret, from magicians usage, and so on. I owe comment on this
point to Mr. David Clines of Sheffield University.
55
Cf. LOT
9
, p. 508: The Persian words presuppose a period after the Persian Empire had been well established.
56
Note also G. G. Camerons remarks (PTT, p. 19) on the penetration of Elamite by so many Old Persian words
from as early as Darius I.
57
PTT, pp. 32-33, and R. T. Hallock, JNES, XIX, 1960, p. 91 (year seven for five).
58
CAD, 3/D, p. 123a. Other Old Persian words in Akkadian include also dtabara (ibid., p. 122a),
a/adrapannu (ibid., vol. 1:1/A:1, p. 195a), hamarakara (ibid., vol. 6/H, pp. 59-60), gardu, gardupatu (ibid.,
Vol. 5/G, p. 50), etc. See W. Eilers, Iranische Beamtennamen in der keilschrfftlichen berlieferung, I (1940).
Also the lists of loan-words in reviews of successive volumes of the CAD by D. O. Edzard in ZA, LIII, NF XIX,
1959, LIV, NF XX, 1961, and LVI, NF XXII, 1964.
59
E.g. GBA, 189.
60
E.g. the whm-nsw, Royal Herald, in Egypt (A. H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, I, 1947, p. 22*,
no. 80).
sources, beyond Daniel and the Targums (likewise prgn in Ezra), is merely negative
evidence (cf. also (5), below). It should also be remembered that survival of words from
Daniel or Ezra in the Targums is to be expected a prioriafter all, they belong to one literary
tradition, Jewish, biblical and commentary/interpretation therefor!
On the other hand, 2 words are so far unique to the Aramaic of Daniel: drgzr and hdbr, both
high titles (counsellor, companion); and 4 words occur so far only in the Aramaic of
Daniel and early (i.e. sixth-fifth century) documents: hdrpn (satrap), dtbr (judge), t(y)pt
(magistrate); zd (certified, etc.). Here also, 3 are titles and 1 part of official style (cf.
Rosenthal, GBA, 189). There is as yet no evidence that any of these 6 terms survived the
Persian period (i.e. after c. 330 BC). This in itself is negative evidence, and therefore is
inadequate. But there is limited positive evidence in its support, from the LXX (Old Greek
and Theodotion).
61
Among the official titles in the Aramaic of Daniel (Dn. 3:2-3, etc.),
Persian
[p.43]
hdrpn and Semitic sgn and phh, and the general phrase all the rulers of the provinces are
reasonably well rendered. But for drgzr, counsellor; gdbr, treasurer;
62
dtbr, law-officer;
t(y)pt, magistrate, police chief, the Old Greek (and later) renderings are hopelessly inexact
mere guesswork. If the first important Greek translation of Daniel was made some time within
c. 100 BC-AD 100, roughly speaking, and the translator could not (or took no trouble to
63
)
reproduce the proper meanings of these terms, then one conclusion imposes itself: their
meaning was already lost and forgotten (or, at the least, drastically changed) long before he
set to work.
64
Now if Daniel (in particular, the Aramaic chapters 2-7) was wholly a product of
c. 165 BC, then just a century or so in a continuous tradition is surely embarrassingly
inadequate as a sufficient interval for that loss (or change) of meaning to occur, by Near
Eastern standards. Therefore, it is desirable on this ground to seek the original of such verses
(and hence of the narratives of which they are an integral part) much earlier than this date,
preferably within memory of the Persian rulei.e. c. 539 (max.) to c. 280 BC (allowing about
fifty years lapse from the fall of Persia to Macedon). At maximum, this could affect the
whole book of Daniel as we have it; at minimum, it could indicate that a second-century
writer used in his work some pre-existing Daniel-narrations, but adapted them so little that he
did not even eliminate words meaningless to him and his readers, such was his archaeological
conscience. On the use of Persian words in reference to the Babylonian kingdom, and their
preponderance over Greek terms, see section 4(5) below.
(5) One further point should be made here: the Persian words in Daniel are specifically Old
Persian words.
65
The recognized divisions of Persian language-history within Iranian are: Old
down to c. 300 BC, Middle observable during c. 300 BC to c. AD 900, and New from c. AD

60a
But see now A. Schaffer, Or., XXXIV (1965), pp. 32-34, for evidence of krz about 1500 BC.
61
See J. A. Montgomery, The Book of Daniel, pp. 199-200, on LXX of Daniel.
62
Presumably not recognized by the LXX translator as identical with gzbr.
63
The LXX of Daniel is known to have been a relatively free renderingbut if the translator gave reasonable
renderings for some terms (e.g. sgn, phh, hdrpn), one would expect him to do this for the rest, had he known
them equally well.
64
This point has also been made by W. St. Clair Tisdall, JTVI, LIII, 1921, p. 206.
65
Even when words in the Aramaic of Daniel cannot be compared with attested Old Persian words, they
correspond with reconstructible forms in Old Persian, not later forms. Old Median is here kept with Old Persian.
900 to the present.
66
Now, the fact that the Iranian element in Daniel is from Old Persian and
not Middle indicates that the Aramaic of Daniel is in this respect pre-Hellenistic, drew on no
Persian from after the fall of that empireand not on any Middle Persian words and forms
that might have penetrated Aramaic in
[p.44]
Arsacid times (c. 250 BC, ff.). This fact again illustrates that the occurrence of Persian words
in Daniel also in late sources such as the Targums has no bearing whatever on Daniels date
except to keep open the whole period of the sixth-econd centuries BC, as already observed.
4. Greek Loan-words. (1) In the Aramaic of Daniel, three words in particular
67
are commonly
considered to be of Greek origin. The three are all terms for musical instruments: qytrs,
psntrn, smpny. For detailed consideration of these three words (possible origins, history,
meanings), see the study by T. C. Mitchell and R. Joyce, pp. 39-7 above. In this section, it is
not so much the words themselves as the principle and significance of Greek words occurring
in Imperial Aramaic that will be considered.
(2) The common assumption about the significance of these three words in Daniel is pithily
enshrined in S. R. Drivers oft-quoted dictum:
68
the Greek words demanda date after the
conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great (BC 332). It is widely assumed, even today,
thatbefore Alexanders conquest of the OrientGreek words could have no place in
Ancient Near Eastern languages, and least of all in a city so far removed from the East
Mediterranean seaboard as is Babylon. However, these easy assumptions of Greek influence
in the East only after c. 332 BC are in large measure misleading and erroneous, as the
following evidence makes clear.
(3) Effective Greek intercourse and influence in the Near East long antedate the end of the
fourth century BC. Leaving aside the Assyrian king Sargon IIs boast
69
of drawing the
lamanian (lonian of Cyprus) from the Mediterranean like a fish, good archaeological
evidence betrays Greek traders active in the Orient in the eighth century BC:
70
at the Syrian
seaport of Al Mina (ancient Posideion ?), levels X-VII, Euboean Greeks shared the trade with
Cypriots. Greek pottery of the period has been found at various Syrian sites (including
Hamath and in the Amq plain), and penetrated even to Nineveh in Assyria itself:
71
In Palestine itself, eighth-century Greek pottery is attested, e.g.
[p.45]
an Argive crater from the Samaria of Jeroboam II, c. 750 BC,
72
and other material from
Megiddo and Tell Abu Hawam.
73
The process continues in the seventh century: the Greeks

66
OP
2
, pp. 6-7, especially 3-5.
67
From time to time, other words have been claimed to be of Greek origin, or even phrases (as loan-
translations), but none are at all convincing, and they require no refutation here.
68
LOT
9
, p. 508; the italics are those of Driver.
69
ARAB II, 80; A. L. Oppenheim in ANET
2
, p. 285a, 11.11-15. Iamani of Ashdod was probably Semitic, not
Greek, cf. H. Tadmor, JCS, XII, 7958, p. 80 and n.217, and H. W. F. Saggs, Iraq, XXV, 1963, pp. 77-78.
70
For what follows, cf. conveniently GO, pp. 67-70, with bibliography, p. 725.
71
Unpublished, cf. ibid., p. 69.
72
M. Avi-Yonah, IEJ, XI, 1961, p. 158b, apud K. M. Kenyon et al., Samaria-Sebaste III (1957), pp. 210-212.
supreme at Al Mina
74
(levels VI-V), and their pottery still reaching into Syria (e.g. atal
Hyk, Zincirli), elsewhere in Phoenicia (Byblos, Tell Sukas), and Palestine (Tell Abu
Hawam; Mezad Hashavyahu)and even to Babylon of all places.
75
From the late seventh
century BC onward, the Greeks had their famous centre Naukratis in the Egyptian Delta. In
the early sixth century, Tell Sukas replaced Al Mina as chief Syrian port of the Greeks, but
the latter revived under Persian rule in the fifth century.
76
In the fifth century, Greek
(Athenian) pottery is well attested in Syria and Palestine at a series of sites,
77
right down to
Elath (Tell el Kheleifeh) on the Gulf of Aqaba leading into the Red Sea.
78
During the sixth-
fifth centuries BC, a new Greek port-settlement flourished at Minet el Beida (old Leucos
Limen) near the long-ruined mound of Ugarit (Ras Shamra),
79
and lasted perhaps until the
third century BC. In other words, Greek traders were active in the Levant from the days of
Amos onwards, and their wares penetrated to Nineveh and Babylon.
Greek mercenaries are attested in the Orient from the late seventh century BC onwards. Apart
from those Greek and Carian mercenaries recruited c. 66o BC by Psammetichus I of Egypt in
the pages of Herodotus, excavations at Carchemish yielded a splendid Greek bronze shield,
once doubtless the property of a Greek mercenary who served under the next pharaoh, Necho
II, at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC.
80
The Greek and Carian mercenaries of
Psammetichus II left their names at Abu Simbel in Nubia. Greek
[p.46]
mercenaries also served in the Babylonian forces about the period 605-585 BC, as witnessed
by the poet Alcaeus whose brother fought alongside the Babylonians in Phoenicia.
81
Fourth-
century Greek papyri were found at Elephantine in Upper Egypt long ago.
82
Going a step further, it may be noted that Greek artisans were apparently employed in the
Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar. The ration-tablets from the tenth to thirty-fifth years of
Nebuchadrezzar II (i.e. c. 595-570 BC) published by Weidner
83
include Ionians,
84
besides
such people as Jehoiachin of Judah, his entourage, and many other assorted foreigners
(especially craftsmen). It is clear from one or two of the personal names that these Ionians
came from Asia Minor in particular (Cilicia, Lycia, etc.); the name Kunzumpiya is good

73
GO, p. 69; T. J. Dunbabin, The Greeks and their Eastern Neighbours (1957), pp. 72-74 (Tell Abu Hawam and
Syrian sites to c. 700 BC).
74
GO, pp. 70-74.
75
Ibid., p. 75; Dunbabin, op. cit., p. 76; on Greek pottery at Mezad Hashavyahu, cf. J. Naveh, IEJ, XII, 1962, pp.
97-99.
76
GO, pp. 76-77. For Tell Sukas, see preliminary reports by P. J. Riis, Annales Archologiques de Syrie VIII-IX,
1958-1959, pp. 128-130; ibid., X, 1960, pp. 223-128; ibid., XI-XII, 1961-1962, pp. 137-140. A spindle-whorl of
c. 600 BC from this site has a womans name of lonian type in Greek script on it, see Archaeology, XVII, 1964,
pp. 206-207 with fig.
77
GO, p. 79.
78
See N. Glueck, BASOR, LXXX, 1940, p. 3, and into Arabia then, W. F. Albright, ibid., p. 3, n.2a.
79
See C. F. A. Schaeffer and C. Clairmont in Ugaritica IV (1962), pp. xxxv, 631-636; coin-hoard, Schaeffer,
Ugaritica I (1939), p. 50 and fig. 39 idem, in Mlanges R. Dussaud, I (1939), pp. 461-487.
80
Cf. latterly, GO, pp. 75, 132, and plate 6b.
81
Ibid., p. 76; J. D. Quinn, BASOR, CLXIV, 1961, pp. 19-20.
82
Cf. BMAP, p. 57, and n.5 and refs.
83
In Mlanges... R. Dussaud, II (1939), pp. 923-935.
84
Ibid., pp. 932-935.
Luvian,
85
and others may be. In other words, the Babylonians lumped together under lonians
the mixed inhabitantsGreek, Cilician, Lycianof Southern Asia Minor. Greek artisans in
the Persian Empire are well known.
Finally, there is the question of Greek words and expressions in Imperial Aramaic a century
before Alexander ever went East. Already, fifty years ago, the Greek money-term stater was
identified in the Aramaic papyri from Egypt in documents of c. 400 BC.
86
The reserve
formerly felt
87
about this identification because of a possible connection with Babylonian
istatir(anu) can be discounted. The Babylonian word is now considered itself to be a Greek
loan-word (mainly in documents of the Alexander and Seleucid periods) in that language,
88
while in Imperial Aramaic the word stater recurs in Papyrus Brooklyn 12:5 and 14, there
explicitly called Greek money (ksp Ywn, silver of Yavan).
89
While some earlier attempts to
identify certain words as Greek in the Aramaic papyri have failed,
90
this possibility has now
come under renewed examination. Yaron with some plausibility would identify drmy in P.
Brooklyn 9:3 as Greek drma.
91
The case of
[p.47]
prypt or pdypt is doubtful (P. Brooklyn 12:11). Yaron read pdypt and took this as Greek
paideutos, brought up, i.e. ward or nursling, quoting the Talmudic pdypty as parallel.
92
Possibly with less likelihood, Rabinowitz read prypt
93
and interpreted this as Greek threpte.
They cannot both be right, and may both be wrong.
94
Rabinowitz would find three more
Greek words: prtrk as from prtarkhs;
95
hpth as from ippeuts;
96
and bygrn as from
epigramrna.
97
But these, too, are rather dubious; the meaning gained for bygrn is attractive,
though the transliteration or transcription (b/p; n/m) is unconvincing but not quite impossible.
Perhaps still more difficult to be sure of are various suggested loan-translations from Greek
into Aramaic. Again, most of these are dubious,
98
while one or two are admittedly striking
99
unless future discoveries prove them to be less distinctive than they appear at present.
Moreover, as Yaron remarked, attestation of a Greek usage in Aramaic documents of a date
earlier than its occurrence in actual Greek documents so far known to us can be purely

85
Ibid., p. 933 (after Sundwall); cf. A. Goetze, JCS, VIII, 1954, p. 77, and eapecially Ph. H. J. Houwink ten
Cate, The Luwian Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia Aspera during the Hellenistic Period (1961), pp. 139,
(177).
86
In AP, nos. 35:4, 7; 37:12; [61:8?]; 67:9. Cf. ibid., p. 131, in agreement with Sachau and Ungnad; AOT, pp.
143-144.
87
Cf. AOT, loc. cit., on Johns and Olmstead.
88
Cf. CAD, 7/I-J, p. 204: istatirru.
89
BMAP, pp. 277, 276, cf. pp. 40, 269.
90
Reviewed and rightly rejected by Rowley, AOT, pp. 142-145 passim.
91
HUCA, XXVIII, 1957, p. 49.
92
Ibid., pp. 49-50.
93
Biblica, XXXIX, 1958, p. 78, and his Jewish Law (1956).
94
A Greek origin appears to have been tacitly abandoned by Yaron in his LAP, p. 40 (and n.3).
95
See the references in notes 93, 96, above, and below.
96
Biblica, XLI, 1960, pp. 72-74.
97
Biblica, XXXIX, p. 78-79; his passing suggestion (ibid., 82, n.2) that ptgm is from Greek is certainly
mistaken, on Eastern data.
98
Cf. on gw, qry l J. J. Rabinowitz, Biblica, XXXIX, 7958, pp. 77-78, 80-81.
99
Cf. LAP, pp. 703-704, 126-127, and HUCA, XXVIII, 1957, pp. 50-51.
accidental,
100
simply because the earlier Greek documents and occurrences have not yet been
recovered. (This point should be borne in mind by those who insist upon the smpny of Daniel
being a musical instrument in Greek only late in the Hellenistic periodthis is, identically,
the elementary fallacy of negative evidence and proves nothing except the inadequacy of our
Greek source-material, musical as well as legal.)
In other words, the idea that Greek words and influence could not affect the Near East or
appear in Aramaic before Alexander the Great must be given upthe massive general
background apart, both are sufficiently attested by the certain occurrence of statr, clearly
labelled Greek money, the probable occurrence of drma, gift, and just possibly by other
words or phraseology that need confirmation before they could be taken as definite evidence.
It is a gain to have this linguistic demonstration of Greek influence at c. 400 BC; in view of
the penetration of the Orient by Greek mer-
[p.48]
chants and mercenaries for 350 years before even that date, still earlier evidence must be
expected some day.
101
One may mention the long-known lion-weight from Abydos (Mysia) in
N. W. Asia Minor, inscribed sprn lqbl stry zy ksp, Exactly corresponding to the silver
s(t)ater,
102
which probably dates to roughly 500 BC.
103
(4) It is in the light of the foregoing background that the three Greek musical terms in Daniel
should be approached. Of the three terms, qytrs (kitharos) is already known from Homer (i.e.
eighth century BC at latest), and so has no bearing on date whatever. This leaves only the two
words psntrn and smpny, commonly stated to be attested only from the second century BC or
so with the required meanings. On these words, cf. Mitchell and Joyces paper in this volume;
here, suffice it to reiterate that this is only negative evidence, i.e. lack of evidence, and there is
nothing to prevent earlier occurrences from turning up some day in future Greek epigraphic
finds. There are plenty of parallels in the Near East for the accidental preservation of words of
one language as loan-words in another tongue at an earlier date than extant known

100
Cf. ibid., and LAP, p. 704 top; contrast the nave and unjustified scepticism of Rowley, AOT, p. 148; where
may one find a corpus of Greek papyri (legal, or music!) to compare with Near Eastern sources? Cf. also n.105,
below.
101
There is thus no justification for the a priori view that 400 BC is the earliest likely date (cf. J. J. Rabinowitz,
Biblica, XXXIX, 1958, p. 79, n.5). The speculations of C. H. W. Johns, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, II, pp.
278 ff., have little bearing on stater in Aramaic, now that it is there called Greek money. Double t in the word
has nothing to do with Ashtoreth, unless metathesis be involvedbut no such form as *Ashtater is attested for
Ashtoreth.
Note also the possible occurrence of the Greek term karpobogos, tax-gatherer, in an Aramaic ostracon of
the fifth century BC from Elath on the Gulf of Aqaba (N. Glueck and W. F. Albright, BASOR, LXXX, 1940, pp.
8-9 and n.12); but note that C. C. Torrey, ibid., LXXXII, 1941, pp. 15-16, would read (h)mr blgn, bottled wine.
102
Most recently, H. Donner and W. Rllig, Kanaanische und Aramische lnschriften, I (1962), p. 50:263, and
II (1964), p. 370:263; ef. also Kraeing, BMAP, p. 276, with Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge, I (1930), p. 267 [69]. It
has been suggested that the lion weight itself corresponds to a gold, not silver, stater in weight. But as Dormer
and Rllig remark, we still know far too little about weights and measures in Persian-period Anatolia to judge of
this.
103
S. A. Cooke, Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions (1903), p. 193: sixth-fifth centuries BC; Schaeder, loc.
cit., and Rosenthal, Aramaistische Forschung, p. 24: c. 500 BC; Dormer and Rllig, loc. cit., fifth-fourth century
BC.
occurrences in the original tongue.
104
In Mesopotamia we have clay tablets, and in Egypt
papyri, ostraca and monumental texts, on a far grander scale of survival than any
contemporary records of West Semitic (even with Ugaritic) or classical Greek No-one raises
objections when a West Semitic word (or a particular meaning of a word)
[p.49]
turns up as a loan-word in Egyptian New Kingdom texts or in the Mari tablets, perhaps
centuries before it is attested in any West Semitic inscriptions or papyri,
105
and exactly the
same principle should apply to Greek. Thus, these two words psntrn and smpnyand only
two words from an entire book!are necessarily indecisive, when the only appeal is to
ignorance.
There seems to be little or nothing original about the broad types of musical instrument
indicated by the three words (lyre, double pipe, etc.); similar instruments in these categories
were already long known in the Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia included.
106
At most, they
could be new sub-varieties, introduced alongside other possible novelties in Neo-Babylonian
(or later ?) state worship;
107
even when a civilization already has its own wealth of musical
instruments, new models with their foreign names are still acceptable.
108
(5) Lastly, it is noteworthy how few are these words: three in an entire book as contrasted with
even 19 or 20 Persian words in the Aramaic and a few more in the Hebrew. The obvious
inference, when one remembers the Greek relations with the Near East from the eighth
century BC onwards, is that the Aramaic of Daniel could have been written at any time from
c. 539 BC onwards until just after the fall of the Persian Empire. In Ancient Near Eastern
literature, a later writer tends to deck his description of an earlier period with trappings of his
own time, while retaining archaic features that have survived. On this basis, if we supposed a
Daniel high up in the administration at Babylon during the first few years of the Persian
supremacy (as the book itself suggests), then writing of hisunder
[p.50]
Persian rulewould naturally depict both his Babylonian and Persian settings within the
now-current (i.e. Persian) terms, plus some Babylonian survival; hence the Persian words

104
Despite Rowleys unconsciousness of all this, AOT, pp. 149, 152 middle; there is nothing peculiarly
difficult about this. Preservation of W. Semitic terms in Egyptian, etc., long before they appear in dated Semitic
material, is a coimnonplace phenomenon (see next note); why not Greek in Aramaic?
105
From the possible range of examples, let two here suffice. In the Syrian war-reliefs of Ramesses II (c. 1290-
1224 BC) at Luxor occurs the place-name D[l]t-Dinr, for *Deleth-Sill (or -Silul, by dissimilation), Door of
Locusts. Sill is a form of well-known collective type (z
e
bb, g
e
dd), and related to the s
e
lsal of Deuteronomy
28:42; its meaning is certified by the locust-hieroglyph determinative. Similarly, p s (or, sn) Dirum (P.
Anastasi I, 27:3), Crossing of the Hornets (*Sirm). Where in any W. Semitic inscriptions are these words
attested as early as the thirteenth century BC? Or even elsewhere at all in just these forms? No-one finds this
peculiarly difficult. (For these names, see Kitchen, JEA, L, 1964, pp. 53-54.)
106
See the paper by T. C. Mitchell and R. Joyce in this volume, pp. 19-27.
107
E.g., the changes at Ur, reminiscent of the ceremony at Dura in Daniel (cf. C. L. Woolley, Excavations at Ur
(1954), pp. 224-228 (esp. 227-228), or his Ur of the Chaldees (1950, etc.), pp. 146-152, esp. pp. 157-152), and
the official publication, Ur Excavations, IX (1962), pp. 23-24.
108
As in Nineteenth Dynasty Egypt, Egypts own heritage of instruments did not inhibit her from borrowing a
series of foreign terms and models. At random, cf. the wr, knnrt, nth, etc., of P. Anastasi IV, 12:2-3 (R. A.
Caminos, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies (1954), pp. 182, 186-187).
even in his account of government hierarchy under Babylon (Dn. 3). By the same token, a
writer of the second century BC should have used Greek terms in such a passage where
Hebrew or Aramaic terms did not suffice for technicalitiesstratgos, epistolographos,
archn and the rest; for in 165 BC, Palestine had already had 150 years of Ptolemaic and
Seleucid rule. Therefore, one wouldon the Greek and Persian evidence aboveprefer to
put the Aramaic of Daniel in the late sixth, the fifth, or the fourth centuries BC, not the third
or second. The latter is not ruled out, but is much less realistic and not so favoured by the
facts as was once imagined.
B. ORTHOGRAPHY AND PHONETICS
1. The Phenomena Summarized. (1). Returning from foreign loan-words to the actual Aramaic
Aramaic of Daniel, one of the most contested points has been the spelling of certain classes of
words. Thus, in the Old Aramaic texts (tenth to seventh centuries BC) and Imperial Aramaic
papyri (sixth to fourth centuries BC), one finds written:
z where Daniel and Ezra have d; Hebrew z, and Arabic d (dh),
t; / (th),
q ; s d,
s t; s z,
s(?) or s ,
Also, variations in final h and .
Because of the spellings with d, t, , t, as in the later Aramaic of the Targums (and Syriac) and
in Nabataean and Palmyrene, Rowley would consider that the Aramaic of Daniel must fall
between that of the papyri (say, fifth century BC) and that of these later dialects, i.e. in the
second century BC, the /s and h/ having less significance. At first sight, and superficially,
this group of facts appears to justify Rowleys conclusions on dating; but in point of fact,
these conclusions depend upon two major assumptions:
(i) That the consonantal text of the Aramaic of Daniel has undergone no change of
orthography since the time of its original composition.
(ii) That the normal orthographies of Old, Imperial and Biblical Aramaic all give throughout a
strictly accurate phonetic spelling of the consonant-sounds of these forms of Aramaicin
short, that sounds and spellings always and closely agree.
[p.51]
In reality, neither assumption is justifiedthe first is most probably wrong, and the second
one is demonstrably wrong. If the first assumption is lost, then the existing orthography may
date only itself to the second or third centuries BC, and not the first composition of the
Aramaic part of the bookthe date will be open, on this particular point. If the second
assumption is proved wrong (see below), then the Aramaic of Daniel could have been written
in the sixthfifth centuries BC phonetically, or else in the then-conventional orthography
subsequently replaced (gradually or otherwise) by the later and surviving orthography. The
result either way is the same: to place the Aramaic of Daniel anywhere in the sixth to second
centuries BC. These points require an examination of the phenomena in question.
(2) The CanaanitePhoenician alphabet now has a respectable pedigree reaching back from
the tenth century BC
109
via various Palestinian epigraphs of the thirteenthtwelfth centuries
BC to the so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions and related material of the fifteenth century
BC,
110
if not earlier.
111
While their prehistory probably goes back much further,
112
the first
major settlement of Aramaeans in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia dates to the twelfth-tenth
centuries BC, and it was from the late Canaanites or Phoenicians that they borrowed the
alphabet.
113
The early primacy of Phoenician over Aramaic as a written language found
curious later echoes in northern Syria and Cilicia. Thus, in the little northern Syrian kingdom
of Samal-Yadiya (now Zincirli and region), king Kilamuwathough an Aramaeanhad his
inscriptions set out in Phoenician, language as well as script,
114
about 830 BC. Later, kings
Panammu I (c. 760 BC) and Bar-rakib (c. 730 BC)
115
set up inscriptions in their own peculiar
Aramaic dialect (Yaudic), and Barrakib also an inscription in regular Old Aramaic,
practically Imperial Aramaic. In Cilicia, as late as c. 730 BC,
116
Asitiwada of Que set up
bilingual inscriptions at Asitiwaddiya (modern Kara-
[p.52]
tepe) in Hittite hieroglyphs and Phoenician;
117
from the sixth century BC onwards Aramaic
was used in Asia Minor.
118
Now the point of all this is that Aramaic had in the early first millennium BC maintained
separate more of the Old Semitic consonants than had Phoenician. In Phoenician and Hebrew,
d had fallen together with z, t with , d and z with s, h with h, with . and so on.
119
However,
in Old Aramaic, d, t, d, z, were still pronounced as distinct soundsbut no separate symbols
existed for them in the Phoenician alphabet in which Aramaic now came to be written. Instead
of creating additional letters, the Aramaeansperhaps under Phoenician scribal influence
simply made certain letters serve to write two consonants, often following Phoenician
orthography in the words concerned (d written as z; t as , z, as s), but not in all (d written as
q, not s).
120
This tension between pronunciation and spellingphonetic fact and orthographic

109
E.g. the Byblos inscriptions of kings Ahiram, Yehimilk, Abibaal, Elibaal; references in F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography (1952), p. 11 and n.1.
110
References, ibid., pp. 8-9, notes 31-38.
111
Possibly the Gezer potsherd (c. 1700 BC?), ibid., p. 8, n.30, and even a Sinai text (cf. A. H. Gardiner, JEA,
XLVIII, 1962, pp. 45-48).
112
See Kitchen, Hittite Hieroglyphs, Aramaeans and Hebrew Traditions, chapter 11:2; A. R. Millard,
Archaeology and the Life of Jacob; both forthcoming.
113
A generally recognized fact, e.g. Cross and Freedman, op. cit., p. 37.
114
References in Cross and Freedman, op. cit., pp. 11-12, n.2; Rosenthal in ANET
2
, pp. 500, 501.
115
For dates, cf. Kitchen, Hittite Hieroglyphs, Aramaeans and Hebrew Traditions, Table XII and commentary.
116
On date and kingdom, cf. ibid., Table XI and commentary.
117
For latter version, cf Rosenthal in ANET
2
, pp. 499-500 with refs.; Donner and Rllig, Kanaanische und
Aramische Inschrjften, I-II, no. 26.
118
Ibid., nos. 258-265 (fifth century BC, ff.).
119
Most of these sounds were separate in Ugaritic; cf. UM (and Ugaritic Textbook (1965)).
120
This probably reflects a phonetic change that had already occurred in Old Aramaic. For this section, cf. G.
Garbini, LAramaico antico (1956), pp. 247-248.
conventionhas long been recognized in Semitic scholarship and is generally accepted
today.
121
This was the state of things by the eighth century BC, by the end of which we have Imperial
Aramaic, used within Assyria as well as in Syria itself. From now on, Aramaic came
increasingly to be written (and eventually spoken) by many other people besides the
Aramaeans themselvesby Assyrian scribes in commerce and royal service, even between
high officials of Assyria (e.g. the Assur ostracon),
122
and by correspondingly more different
peoples in the
[p.53]
Neo-Babylonian and Persian Empires. By and large, Aramaic continued to be written in its
phonetically-inadequate, pseudo-Phoenician orthography. But by the fifth century BC (as is
illustrated by the Aramaic documents from Egypt) and beginning rather earlier, certain
phonetic changes occurred in the spoken language, and occasionally appeared in the written
documents. In speech, d was now pronounced as d, t as t, q as . etc., and occasionally a
scribe lapsed into actually writing these consonants instead of historical z, , q, etc., thus
betraying the true state of affairs.
123
(3) The full evidence for these facts need not be repeated here; a few points must suffice,
especially more recently demonstrable or neglected ones.
(i) z/d/d. In Old Aramaic the name of certain kings appears as Hadad-eezer in Hebrew
(same orthography as Phoenician) but as (H)adad-()idri in Assyrian cuneiform. D is not the
Assyrian transscript for Hebrew zwitness Azriyau for Azariah of Judah; nor is z the
Hebrew-Phoenician transcript for Aramaic dwitness Hadad in both. Z in Hebrew-
Phoenician and d in Assyrian have only one common denominator, and that is d (dh), as
often shown by Ugaritic d (cf. here, dr).
124
To Hebrew names in ezer (e.g. Eliezer),

121
By: D. H. Mller, Wiener Zeitschrift fr die Kunde des Morgeniandes, VII, 1893, pp. 113 ff.; C.
Brockelmann, Grundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatik der Semitischen Sprachen, I (1908), p. 134, and
clearer, idem, Prcis de Linguistique Smitique (1920), p. 73, 58; idem, Handbuch der Orientalistik, III. 2-3
(1954), p. 135; H. Bauer and P. Leander, Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramischen (1927), 6, pp. 25-27;
Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, p. 98; Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge I (1930), pp. 242, 244 [44, 46]; Rosenthal,
Aramaistische Forschung (1939), pp. 56-57; J. Friedrich, Phnizisch-Punische Grammatik (1951), p. 155, 8*;
Cross and Freedman, op. cit., pp. 23-24; Garbini, loc. cit.; cf S. Moscati, A. Spitaler, E. Ullendorff, W. von
Soden, An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1964), pp. 29-30, 8.18 (adding
an alternative suggestion that also presupposes non-equivalence of Aramaic phonetics and orthography); the
reserves of S. Segert, Archiv Orientln, XXVI, 1958, pp. 570-572, result from a too superficial treatment of the
question.
122
Cf. R. A. Bowman, JNES, VII, 1948, pp. 73-76, for examples and references, plus H. Tadmor in B. Mazar,
BA, XXV, 1962, p. 111, n.24.
123
Long ago recognized by M. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fr Semitische Epigraphik, III, 1915, pp. 79, 106. In a
criticism of Boutflower, Rowley, AOT, p. 25, committed the astonishing faux pas of confusing phonetics with
orthography, when he navely assumed that in Aramaic d (dh) first became z and then changed to d to be seen
in the papyri. Phonetically, the facts are wholly otherwise (cf. refs in n.121, above): d was first written as z (and
still pronounced d; or just possibly already as d on the alternative mentioned by Moscati et al., Introduction, p.
29), then it became d in speech, and so came to be written as d instead of z. In HSD, p. 118, Rowley still talks of
the language of the scroll (and of the Aramaic of Daniel) [my italics] when it should be orthography. As
alternative, the most that could be postulated would be two parallel dialectal forms, one in d and one in z; cf
latterly in Hebrew and Ugaritic, M. Dahood, Biblica, XLV, 1964, pp. 407-408 and references there given.
124
UM no. 1384; note that in Ugaritic, many words have passed from d to d (e.g. d = Aram. d, Heb. z).
cuneiform sources offer many Aramaean names ending (in cuneiform) in -idri (e.g. Ilu-idri),
besides names from other roots containing d,
125
e.g. Hadyan which in Hebrew appears as
Hezion and in Akkadian cuneiform as Hadianu.
126
A less obvious but telling example is
afforded by the Old Aramaic stela of Zakir, king of
[p.54]
Hamath (c. 760 BC).
127
Among the Seven kings that attacked him was the king of Mlz. No
kingdom of Mlz is attested in N. Syria or Anatoliabut Milid (Malatya) is well known.
128
It is
evident that this name was treated as if it were Milidh (with d)and the supposed d
automatically written as z. For a late Anatolian personal name Kindisarma treated in the same
way, cf. p. 62 below.
The real phonetic change in pronunciation from d to d that already clearly appears in the fifth
century BC as indicated by occasional d for z, dahab for zahab, etc., can be illustrated from
two phenomena: false archaism (z written wrongly for real d, as if it had been d), and truly
phonetic transcription of Aramaic into an alien script.
(a) False archaism. In P. Brooklyn 3:17, we find instead of normal dyn w-dbb, lawsuit and
process, the solecism zyn w-zbb.
129
For the scribe, d and d had long been indistinguishable in
pronunciation, and so he wrote dyn and dbb with a z that was totally irrelevant as the d here is
original and not derived from old d. This process is further attested in Mandean much later;
130
it may also be the explanation for Mlz for Milid in the Zakir stela (eighth century BC) noticed
just above and of Kind/zisarma on p. 62 below.
(b) Aramaic phonetically written in an alien script. As is well known, a clay tablet from Uruk
(S. Babylonia) of perhaps c. 300 BC bears an Aramaic-language text written in cuneiform
script; despite the difficulties of interpretation,
131
it is crystal clear that d and not z was being
written for *d.
132
But much earlier and more important than this is a unique Egyptian papyrus
of the fifth century BC (i.e. contemporary with the Elephantine papyri) written in the Demotic
script, and in the Aramaic language! Regrettably, if understandably, only a preliminary
sample has been published,
133
and no definitive edition in the twenty years since then, but
there is, even so, amply enough to serve our purpose. In Egyptian at this period, the sound d
had mainly become t in pronunciation, and
[p.55]

125
Some are quoted by Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp. 95-96 with references.
126
Cf. W. F. Aibright, BASOR, LXXXVII, 1942, p. 26, n.7, and AS, VI, 1956, p. 84, n.53; on the kings Hezion
and Hadianu, cf. Kitchen, Hittite Hieroglyphs, Aramaeans and Hebrew Traditions, Tables IV and X respectively.
127
Kitchen, ibid., Table V, commentary, for date; Donner and Rllig, Kanaanische und Aramische
Inschrzften, I-II, no. 202 for text, etc.
128
Kitchen, op. cit., Table XIV, for kings and chronology.
129
BMAP, p. 162, and more clearly, E. Y. Kutscher, JAOS, LXXIV, 1954, p. 235.
130
Cf. M. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris fr Semitische Epigraphik, III, 1915, p. 106, quoting Th. Nldekes
Grammatik; plus Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge I, p. 245 [47].
131
On this text, cf. C. H. Gordon, A.f.O., XII, 1937-1939, pp. 105-117 (with earlier literature, p. 105, n.1); B.
Landsberger, ibid., pp. 247-57; Gordon, Orientalia, NS IX, 1940, pp. 29-38.
132
The relative pronoun is d; Gordon, A.f.O., XII, 1937-1939, pp. 112:42, 116.
133
See R. A. Bowman, JNES, III, 1944, pp. 219-231.
foreign d was written with the old signs for t, d, or even nt.
134
Now whenever in this
document a word occurs which is written with z in Old Aramaic and the papyri and with d in
Biblical and later Aramaic, in this papyrus it is written with t (for d). Thus, tn, tn, k-tnh stand
for pronominal dn, dn, k-dnh, usually written historically as zn, zn, k-znh in the
Elephantine papyri. In other words, by the fifth century BC (and doubtless earlier) z for d was
a purely historical spelling, and the real pronunciation was d as in Biblical and later
Aramaic; the evidence of this document (combined with the zyn-zbb/dyn-dbb of P. Brooklyn
3:17) is final.
(ii) /t/t. Here, the shift from t written to t both spoken and written was under way long
before the fifth century BC, when it occurs almost throughout in the papyri. Thus, West
Semitic tbr, to break, in Ugaritic (UM, III, no. 2000) is written br in Old Aramaic (e.g.
Sfir texts), but tbr in the fifth-century papyri (AP, four references) as in Daniel and later
Aramaic. Tub, return, in Ugaritic (UM, III, no. 2013) is written wb in Old Aramaic (Sfir),
but twb in the papyriand as twb already in the Assur Ostracon of the seventh century BC
135
(c. 650 BC), line 11, which takes this change back well over a century before there could be a
book of Daniel on any view. Many more examples from the fifth century BC papyri could be
cited for t written as well as spoken t.
136
For the late sixth century BC (in 515 BC)earliest
possible date for Danielone may cite the Meissner papyrus,
137
e.g. in line 8 hrt to till
(ground)
138
= Hebrew hr, cf. Ugaritic hrt to plough (UM, III, no. 668a); and just possibly
t(wb) in line 15.
139
The sole apparent exception is the common word shekel,
140
written
almost always in the papyri in the old orthography ql. But it does occur
[p.56]
once each way, as tql alongside ql, in the Cowley corpus, no. io, line 5, and in the Kraeling
series (Brooklyn), no. 2, line 8 (cf. BMAP, p. 148). More important still, the real. form tql
occurs in the sixth-century Meissner papyrus (line 13 alongside (ql), line 12 end
141
(formal
abbreviation of the historical Spelling), so that the ql of the fifth century papyri is purely a
historical spelling throughout. It should be obvious that in the late sixth and the fifth centuries
BC, t was already identical in speechand commonly in writingwith t, and this process
was under way in the seventh century BC (Assur).

134
As in the case of Darius which in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts occurs once each as trw and ndrt, usually
()ntryw, M. Burchardt, Die Altkanaanischen Fremdworte im gyptischen, II (Leipzig 1910), no. 85, pp. 5-6.
D having become th in modern Greek, it too has trouble with foreign words containing the sound d, nt- being one
solutiona light-hearted example, M. Chubb, City in the Sand (1957), p. 8.
135
A. Dupont-Sommer, Syria, XXIV, 1944-1945, p. 57; noted already by Rowley, AOT, p. 28. Note that there
is, known in the papyri, Daniel, etc. as yty (Ugaritic t cf UM, no. 292), may also occur in this form in the Assur
Ostracon, line 6 (Dupont-Sommer, op. cit., pp. 37:6, 57), but contrast Donner and Rllig, Kanaanische und
Aramische Inschriften, II (1964), p. 284. On date of this ostracon cf. Donner and Rllig, ibid., pp. 288-290.
136
A good selection in AOT, pp. 26-28.
137
Last edition, A. Dupont-Sommer, Un Contrat de Mtayage Egypto-Aramen en lan 7 de Darius I
er
(Mmoires... Acadmie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, XIV. 2), 1944).
138
Ibid., p. 16.
139
Ibid., pp. 25-26, adding (26, n.1) AP, no. 1:7, of 495 BC.
140
As opposed to the verb to weigh, usually written tql.
141
Dupont-Sommer, op. cit., p. 21.
(iii) q/d-/ In this case, the phonetic change is a little more complicated.
142
The Old-Semitic
sound d seems to have passed over to (ghain), and this in Old Aramaicin these cases
was written as q in the Phoenician-derived alphabet.
143
But eventually, as already in Hebrew
and Phoenician, was assimilated to (ayin), reducing q to a mere historical orthography,
and so at length was written instead of q.
144
How early became in pronunciation (in Aramaic) is uncertain, as both could be expressed as
h in cuneiform, which contains the earliest evidence. For the name of the last independent
king of Aram-Damascus which in Hebrew appears as R
e
sn (a contracted form of Rasyan), the
Assyrian texts of Tiglath-pileser III offer a form Rahianu;
145
h cannot be for real sonly for a
or here, hence for a *Rayan or of course a *Rayan. This is in 732 BC.
146
During the fifth
century BC, the Aranaaic papyri from Egypt sometimes write real instead of historical q (for *
)so in the case of l, rib; mr wool (Cowley; Kraeling/Erookiyn, 2:4);
147
and r,
earth.
148
Then, it is possible that , wood, and r to break, occur in the cuneiform
Aramaic text from Uruk (lines 2, 15, respectively).
149
In other words, this shift is in an exactly
similar position to the two already considered.
[p.57]
(iv) s/z//. A similar phenomenon to the foregoing three. Z in Aramaic was first written as s
in the Phoenician-derived alphabet of Old Aramaic; z then passed over to t in pronunciation;
and so eventually, written snow a historical spellingwas supplanted by written and
spoken / As usual, the fifth-century Aramaic papyri already show the effect of the sound-shift
by including several spellings with in / place of the historical s. Thus attested are y/ , to
counsel; /h, counsel (noun); /wr, mountain; and n/r, to guard.
150
A specially interesting
word is tll, shadeso written in both Daniel and the papyrifor which the original zll is
preserved in Ugaritic (UM, III, no. 778), and which may already occur as tll the mid-eighth
century BC in the Old Aramaic Sfir stelae. Broken context prevents absolute certainty over
the latter and so over any postulated change being started by the eighth century BC.
151
(v) //-s. The passage from an apparent, written shin to samekh visible in late Aramaic
(e.g. Palmyrene) may suggest that as distinct from was also long retained in Aramaic, but
indistinguishable from in written documents. That (in) and s (samekh) wereor
becameclosely similar in pronunciation seems clear from the fact that in Hebrew words

142
See C. Brockelmann, Grundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatik der Semitischen Sprachen, I (1908), p. 134,
; S. Moscati et al., An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1964), p. 30.
143
So, in the Zincirli texts (ninth-eighth centuries BC), for example.
144
A different view, Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge, I, p. 246 [48].
145
Not Rasunnu, as often mis-transliterated; see B. Landsberger, Samal, I (1948), p. 69 and n.169 end; A. L.
Oppenheim in ANET
2
, p. 283, n.4a; D. J. Wiseman, Iraq, XVIII, 1956, p. 121.
146
Date of fall of R
e
sn to the Assyrians; Kitchen, Hittite Hieroglyphs, Aramaeans and Hebrew Traditions, Table
IV.
147
Also attested in the unpublished Hermopolis papyri; cf. M. Kamil, Revue de lHistoire Juive en gypte, I,
1947, p. 3.
148
Listed in AOT, pp. 30-31, plus other, non-biblical words.
149
C. H. Gordon, A.f.O., XII, 1937-1939, pp. 116, 117.
150
Others, especially non-biblical, in AOT, p. 29.
151
A. Dupont-Sommer, Les Inscriptions Aramennes tie Sfir (1958), p. 85 on IB:42; cf. S. Segert, Archiv
Orientlni, XXXII, 1964, p. 119.
from certain roots are written on occasion with either sibilant.
152
A priori, therefore, the same
phenomenon might be expected in Aramaic. In fact, it is hardly attested at all either in
Biblical Aramaic or outside it in Imperial Aramaic. In Daniel, there is only one native
Semitic example: sbr (for br), to think. The same is true in Ezra (str). In the Aramaic
papyri, Rowley reviewed four possible roots showing s for ; of these, sbrt (I thought, AP,
no. 37:7)
153
and tstkl from kl, consider, or the like (AP, in Ahiqar, 147),
154
seem beyond
reasonable doubt, despite Rowleys reserves.
155
Now, one isolated example in each major
piece of Biblical Aramaic proves nothing at allthey are far too slender a basis by which to
identify the first beginnings (AOT, p. 38) of a general change in orthography from to s. We
know for a fact that, in the pre-Christian centuries (and even down to the Massoretic epoch,
on to the eighth century AD), there was some MS-variation between and s in the spelling of
a few words:
[p.58]
e.g. bk, gyn, /r.
156
Therefore, we have no guarantee that br and tr had not once upon a
time fluctuated and eventually become settled with s-orthography perhaps long before the
Massoretes,
157
whereas bk, gyn, and /r continued to fluctuate in MS-tradition till much
later. Loan-words and foreign proper names, of course, are not so directly applicable to
Semitic phonetic developments. In the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript-fragment from Qumran
Cave I, fluctuation here is attested for the loan-word srbl in Daniel, which in the scroll
appears as rbl.
158
(Note for Ezra 7:26, that the loan-word rw, better rw, appears as
srwytwith initial samekhin the Arsames documents of the fifth century BC.
159
) As Ksdy,
Chaldaeans, in Ezra is a foreign name, it too is worthless as evidence on this point
especially if taken from (or contaminated by) Akkadian, where the Assyrian and Babylonian
dialectal position on /s and is very intricate.
160
In brief, we have no guarantee that s is
original (cf. Quniran and later MSS-variations)and one Semitic common noun in each of
Daniel and Ezra is much too little evidence on which to base anything.
(vi) Finally, the variation between h and at the end of words. Enough has been said already
by Rowley,
161
Baumgartner,
162
and Schaeder,
163
to obviate need of long discussion here. The
net result is that such variations are chronologically worthless. Of Rowleys conveniently
tabulated 15 points,
164
nos. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, show such affinity in usage between the Aramaic
of Daniel and Old and Imperial Aramaic, that they prove nothing. Likewise, points 9 and 11,
where in each case an isolated writing with h is neither early nor late, but merely

152
E.g. BDB, pp. 690-69, (swg), p. 962 (t; wk), etc.
153
Cowley, AP, p. 134, shows little real doubt about reading sbr.
154
See C. F. Jean and J. Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des Inscriptions Smitiques de lQuest, III (1962), p. 192 end,
and references.
155
Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge, I, p. 247 [49] and n.5, would add skyn, knife.
156
Quoted by Rowley, AOT, p. 34 and n.1.
157
It is, therefore, nonsense to allege that this has any bearing upon phonetic revision, e.g. as particularly
damaging or otherwise, pace Rowley, AOT, p. 38, n.1.
158
Noted by Rowley in HSD, p. 118 and n.3.
159
Cf. p. 39 above; G. R. Driver, Aramaic Documents (1957), Letter 3:6, 7.
160
Cf. briefly W. Von Soden, Grundriss tier Akkadischen Grammatik (1952), 30, especially 6g, p. 31.
161
AOT, pp. 39-50; HSD, pp. 118-120.
162
ZAW, XLV (1927), pp. 90-94, 112-115.
163
Iranische Beitrge, I, pp. 233-235 [35-37], 239-242 [41-44].
164
AOT, pp. 39-50. In HSD, pp. 118-120 (Sect. II), points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = AOT, points 6, 5, 4, 1, 2; HSD, point 6
covers AOT, nos. 12-25, and 7, the latter, p. 67:4. Cf. also Baumgartner, loc. cit. (n. 162, above).
anomalous. This leaves point no. 1 on weindecisive, see below under grammar (p. 68);
and nos. 12-15 on the ending of various parts of verbs having final weak radicals or h (for
y/w). While the Aramaic of Daniel shows variation in the use of h and , the Aramaic papyri
generally discriminate in
[p.59]
writing between verbs in final and in final h (w/y); but this is not always so: the papyri do
show some variations, and these can occasionally appear even in Old Aramaic inscriptions.
As Schaeders study shows clearly,
165
this is the same phenomenon: h and serving by the
fifth century BC simply as vowel-letters in the roles concerned, without consonantal value
and the supposed distinction in the papyri is nothing more than historical orthography, while
the incidental errors (h for , or vice-versa) betiay once more the underlying phonetic facts.
In 1927, Montgomery had already supposed what he rather unsuitably called scribal
confusion (Daniel, p. 18) in transmission. Despite Rowleys opposition to this idea,
166
one
may affirm that in the course of transmission scribal variations have come inthey can be
seen at work in the Qumran MSS of Daniel, as Rowley himself is forced to note.
167
(4) By contrast with these observed changes in the spelling of meaningful parts of speech
(common nouns, pronouns, verbs, etc.), a small point of a different kind may here be briefly
offered. A foreign personal name is essentially a mere labelit may be either fossilized or
deformed in later transmission, but it will not so easily be modernized by those to whom its
form is not meaningful. Hence, such a name may be preserved in an older orthography when
the native matter around it has long been changed or changing. This seems to be precisely the
case with the name Darius in Daniel and Ezra (both Aramaic and Hebrew, the former being
our main concern). In these books, it appears in the form Dryw. Now, in the two oldest-
known Aramaic papyri from Egypt, we find Drw in the Meissner contract of 515 BC (year 7
of Darius I),
168
and Dryw (as in Daniel and Ezra) in the agreement of 49~ BC (Darius I, year
27)
169
but in all the documents of Darius II, the spelling with h:Dry(w)hw.
170
This h-
spelling was retained down to Darius III (Sarnaria papyrus, accession-year, 335 BC).
171
There is, therefore, an obvious cleavage in spelling between documents under Darius I
(Dr(y)hw) and those under Darius II and III (Dry(w)hw)and Daniel and Ezra preserve the
early spelling in their Aramaic.
172
If their Aramaic portions had been composed in the late
sixth to mid-fifth centuries BC (or before Darius II), then this is understandable. But if their
matter was first composed in the third century BC or later, then their failure to
[p.60]
use the form with hin constant use for a century by then (c. 420-330 BC)is quite
incomprehensible. At a minimum, something must thus go back to before c. 420 BC. An

165
See n.163, above.
166
AOT, p. 49; HSD, p. 120.
167
HSD, p. 120, n.5.
168
A. Dupont-Sommer, Contrat tie Mtayage (1944), p. 8.
169
AP, no. 1, p. 1.
170
E.g. AP, nos. 20 ff.; BMAP, nos. 6, 7, 8.
171
Cf. F. M. Cross, BA, XXVI, 1963, p. 113.
172
Likewise their Hebrew, which influenced that in Nehemiah 12:22.
attempt has also been made
173
to date the form Drw to before year 27, and Dryw to years 27
and following, of Darius I, in parallel with the Egyptian hieroglyphic spellings of the name
(trw, tryw, and variants). Actually, the use of Dryw in Egypt probably began earlier in the
reign.
174
It is attested throughout in Demotic documents from Egypt;
175
and in the East
(Babylon), Darimu (= Dariwu, Aramaic Drw) was merely a variant for Dariyamu (=
Danzyawu, Aramaic Dryw) in cuneiform.
176
Thus a Daniel might have begun with a Drw
for his Darius, and this be made later to conform to Dryw, the form current down to Ezras
day (458 BC); but as these documentsDaniel and Ezraoriginated in the East (Babylon,
etc.) on their own statements, they probably would write Dryw from the start. A single name
is only very limited evidence, but has to be taken into account.
177
2. Significance of the Phenomena. (1) One may state on the evidence surveyed that neither of
Rowleys underlying assumptions is justified.
(a) In relation to the second assumption (p. 50, above), it is plain to see that, down to the fifth
century BC, the normal orthography of Old and Imperial Aramaic did not offer a strictly
phonetic spelling for all consonants: d had to be written with a z; t as ; d> as q; z, as s, etc.
It should also be perfectly clear that, by the fifth century BC,
178
a series of sound-shifts had
occurred in Aramaic (d had become d; t as t; d/ as ; z as t, etc.), thereby reducing the old,
traditional written spellings of words from (Phoenician-influenced) phonetic approximations
to phonetically false historical orthographies. This fact is betrayed by the tell-tale examples of
d where z normally stood, t for , etc.; of lapses into phonetic spell-
[p.61]
ing; and even by false archaisms. With h and, again, we have in the fifth century BC mere
vowel-letters, and historical spelling similarly betrayed by occasional scribal lapses. Some of
the changes can already be seen to be operative in the eighth century BC (h/ Zincirli) or in
the seventh (t/t; just possibly z/t). In other words, phonetically there is no reason to doubt that
the Ararnaic of Daniel (or Ezra) was the kind spoken and could have been written in the fIfth
or late sixth centuries BCor some centuries later (leaving Dryw inexplicable) if so desired.
It becomes a question of orthography, not of phonetics. And here we come back to the first
assumption, that of constancy in the orthographic transmission of the Aramaic of Daniel. In
detail, for h, , y, the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the text of Daniel shows that
orthographic variation did in fact occur in MS transmission and tradition.
179
While it is
theoretically possible that a Daniel in Babylon in the early Persian period (c. 530 BC) might
have written his Aramaic as spoken, and not in the customary historical orthography, it would

173
See M. Burchardt, Zeitschrift fr Aegyptische Sprache, XLIX, 1911, pp. 78-80; Rosenthal, Aramaistische
Forschung, p. 37; cf. Dupont-Sommer, loc. cit. (n. 168 above).
174
Note the criticisms by G. Posener, Premire Domination Perse en gypte (1936), pp. 162-163 (and with
reference to the Suez stelae, pp. 176, 188-189).
175
Posener, op. cit., pp. 162-163; used throughout in hieroglyphs at Temple of Kharga for Darius I and II, and
for III in the Bucheum (p. 762, n.2).
176
Cf. F. W. Knig, in Reallexikon tier Assyriologie, II (1938), p. 121a.
177
Note also the title mr malekn, Lord of Kings (and not of Kingdoms as in Ptolemaic for third-second
century BC), given to God in Daniel 2:47, which occurs about 600 BC in the letter of Adon to the pharaoh of
Egypt (Donner and Rllig, Kanaanische und Aramische Inschriften, II (1964), p. 313).
178
Equivalent bodies of papyri, etc., for the seventh and sixth century BC are not at present available; such a find
might serve to show how much further back the fifth-century phenomena really go.
179
Cf. HSD, p. 118, n.3; p. 120, n.5; p. 123, n.10; p. 126, n.5. Also M. Baillet, J. T. Milik, R. de Vaux,
Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, III (1962), p. 115.
be a far simpler and a more realistic assumption that he would have written his Aramaic in the
then current historical orthography which eventually was conformed to the more phonetic
spelling of a later day. Rowley has pilloried Wilson for making of Daniel a spelling
reformer
180
and refused Tisdalls view of a modernization of spelling later than Daniel (and
likewise Battens of Ezra) as being merely to brush the evidence [of the existing text]
aside,
181
these scholars being held by him to have assumed that the present Biblical text is
phonetically unreliable.
182
The last phrase betrays Rowleys own confusion of orthography
with phonetics, of conventional written spelling with pronounced sounds. For Wilson and
Tisdall maintained the phonetic constancy of Daniel, and invoked orthographic (not phonetic)
change (Rowleys unreliability) in its text. The transitions so carefully noted by Rowley (pp.
37-38) are purely orthographic ones, following in the wake of prior phonetic change, as
pointed out above, pp. 52-59.
It should be noted that Rowleys rejection of later orthographic modernization of the text
suggested by Tisdall and mooted above has itself found no acceptance with some of the more
eminent later investigators. Thus, already in 1930, Schaeder considered it necessary to
postulate modernization of the Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra, and cited what looks like a case
of hyper-modernization;
183
[p.62]
this was accepted by Brockelmann
184
and tacitly by Rosenthal.
185
Hence, orthographic
modernization of the text cannot be excluded a priori. For evidence in the text itself; Schaeder
pointed to gdbry, the treasurers, in Daniel 3:2, 3 as compared with gzbry in Ezra 7:21 (and
in Hebrew, Ezra 1:8). Gzbr is a loan-word from Old Persian (or, with Schaeder, the closely-
related Median) ganzabara. When the orthography of Daniel was changing (or, with
Schaeder, was actively revised), with change of written z to spoken d, written to spoken t,
etc., a scribe corrected gzbr to gdbr as if it had once been *gdbr.
186
That this is a case of
hyper-correction (intentional or otherwise) may safely be conceded. But an apparent parallel
for such over-reduction of z to d in a Persian word in the fifth century BC, from the Arsames
correspondence,
187
may here be dismissed. In letters 8, 9 and 10, Arsames writes to Nahtihur,
Knrsyrm and his colleagues, while in Letter 11, one Warohi writes very similarly to
Nahtihur, Kndsyrm [variant in the address: Hn[d]syrm] and his colleagues. Opinion has
wavered over the significance of Knzsrm and its variantsa Persian title, or a personal name
of some kind?
188
It would, in fact, appear to be a proper name of Ciician origin
189
like others
in these same texts.
190
At first glance, Knzsrm could well be a Kunzu-sarma;
191
but the variant

180
Cf. AOT, pp. 23, 24, 39, etc.
181
Ibid., p. 24.
182
Ibid., p. 39.
183
Iranische Beitrge I, p. 242 [44], and especially pp. 245-246 [47-48].
184
Handbuch tier Orientalistik, III (Semitistik), 2-3 (1954), p. 140, quoting Schaeders example of hyper-
modernization.
185
Aramaistische Forschung, pp. 69 and 71 (linguistics cannot put Daniel in the third-second centuries BC, only
its content).
186
References in notes 183, 184, above, plus Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 69 and n. 1; GBA, p. 15.
187
Texts in G. R. Driver, Aramaic Documents (1954-1957).
188
Cf. already, Driver, op. cit. (1954), pp. 26, 32; op. cit. (1957), pp. 67, 78; Eilers, A.f.O., XVII (1954-1956), p.
326 and n.14.
189
Cf. Eilers, loc. cit.
190
Eilers, loc. cit.; A. Goetze, JCS, VIII, 1954, pp. 75-79 passim; Ph. J. Houwink ten Cate, The Luwian
Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia Aspera during the Hellenistic Period (1961), pp. 125, 128, 133, 176.
H/Kndsyrm speaks rather for a Kindi-sarma (*Kinda-sirma?),
192
cf. older Luvian Hanta-sar-
ruma.
193
We have here, then, exactly the same phenomenon as with the Mlz/Milid (also an
Anatolian name!) from the Zakir stela of the eighth century BC (cf. p. 54 above): a d treated
as if it were, or had been, d (dh) and written with z by one scribe, but in this case treated
simply for what it was (phonetic d) by another (Letter II). Hence, this is not the same as
Schaeders phenomenon (reduction
[p.63]
of true z to d) that would for its part more likely occur at a date after the Persian Empire and
common use of ga(n) zibara had passed away.
(b) Therefore, in the abstract (so to speak), there is no reason to deny possible orthographic
change during the textual transmission of Danieland at least one piece of positive textual
evidence points in that direction. But there are two further points to be borne in mind here
which, so far as I know, have hitherto been entirely (and regrettably) ignored in considering
this question of textual change, whether it be gradual, sudden, or the one leading to the other.
The first is that one must make a distinction between inscriptions or ad hoc documents written
once, with no long history of transmission (such as the Elephantine papyriletters, lists, legal
documents, etc.), and essentially literary works (like Daniel, Ezra or Ahiqar) transmitted by
successive copyists for centuries.
194
In the case of single-occasion documents available to us
in their originals, there can be no question of important scribal variants or orthographic
modernization resulting from linguistic changes in addition to repeated recopying over a
period of time. But, conversely, in the case of long-transmitted literary works in use for
centuries, whose originals are lost, there can be no guarantee that substantially later first-
available copies have preserved the original details of orthography (or even of grammar and
syntax).
The second point is that not merely are such changes (i) possible and (ii) probable, but (iii)
they actually and often took place in the transmission of Ancient Near Eastern literature, and
occurrence of modernization is a fact that can be illustrated from that range of literature. We
have no warrant to exempt Biblical literature from sharing in the same fundamental processes
that affected all other literature in the Biblical world. As the available corpus of long-
transmitted West Semitic literature is very small (outside of the Old Testament), it will be
more instructive in the first instance to turn to a parallel Near Eastern literature which can
show a more abundant transmitted literature, with clearly datable works and MSSEgypt.
195
Let us view some of the principles already found valid for Imperial Aramaic, or (as in the case
of orthographic change) suggested for the Aramaic of Daniel.
[p.64]

191
Cf. ten Cate, op. cit., pp. 138-139, 134-136, for the elements Kunzu and Sarma respectively.
192
Perhaps the vowel-letter y after the s instead of before it may indicate a vocalic metathesis.
193
For the element Hant(a)/Knt, see ten Cate, op. cit., pp. 149-150.
194
A distinction apparently entirely overlooked by Rowley, e.g. in AOT, p. 49, when comparing the orthography
of Nabataean and Palmyrene inscriptions (written just the once) with that of Daniel, long transmitted as
literature.
195
Mesopotamia and other regions would also offer illustration of these principles if time and space permitted.
(i) Historical Orthography. In Egypt, this is abundantly attested. The word djed (dd), to say,
is so spelt from the beginning right down to the latest epochs; but by the early first
millennium BC and probably xooo years earlier, the final d (first becoming t) was lost from
speech in nearly all uses, as shown by occasional spellings as d for dd.
196
Or take the word for
star, siba (sb), so spelt at all periods to the endbut already pronounced siw (b to w) not
only in the early first millennium BC as shown by two occurrences in the Twenty-second
Dynasty
197
but even in the late second millennium BC (Nineteenth Dynasty).
198
In the
Demotic script, the two opposing tendenciesuse of inherited historical orthography versus
phonetic spellingshave long complicated the task of modern transcribers.
199
(ii) False Archaism. This, too, is well known. In Egyptian, various sound-shifts occurred over
the centuries, such as d (dj) to d and d to t, r to , and so on. Sometimes a word containing an
original d, t, , etc., was misspelt in later texts with a d, d or r, etc., that it never originally
possessed (exactly like the zyn w-zbb for dyn w-dbb in Imperial Aramaic, p. 54 above). Thus
the Egyptian word wdhw for offering-table was frequently written later as wdhw,
200
and
even w()dhw,
201
to cite but one example.
(iii) Orthographic Changes in long manuscript-transmission. One may mention the
characteristically Late Period (c. 800-200 BC) orthographies found in the MS Papyrus
Chassinat I (c. 650 BC?) of the story of General Sisenet and King Neferkara story which,
in fact, goes back to the Middle Kingdom age, about iooo years earlier
202
and the similar
case of a new Ghost Story.
203
The same kind of thing could be instanced of New Kingdom
writings in other
[p.65]
Middle Kingdom literary works. An even more vivid example is afforded by the transmission
of religious literature, especially ritual textsthe orthography of these (in both historical and
phonetic features) in the great Ptolemaic temples (c. 300 BC-AD 200) is wholly different
from that of the versions known from New Kingdom temples and papyri of 1000 to 1500
years earlierthe versions that prove by their very existence that a late orthography does not
necessarily imply a late date of origin.
204

196
From M(iddle Kingdom), according to A. Erman and E. Grapow, Wrterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, V
(1931), p. 618 lower right. Examples will be found in names like Dje(d)-Khons-ef-eonkh, Dje(d)-Mt-es-
onkh, etc., of the early first millennium BC in texts such as those published by G. Legrain, Statues et Statuettes
ties Rois et des Particuliers, III (1914) (Catalogue Gnral du Caire).
197
R. A. Caminos, The Chronicle of Prince Osorkon (1958), p. 81, 119j and reference.
198
Compare in Ostracon Cairo 25,521, recto, line 24, in a proper name: H-m-sw for H-m-sb (published in J.
Cern, Ostraca Hiratiques (1930-1935), p. 23*).
199
See briefly H. Brunner in H. Kees (ed.), Handbuch tier Orientalistik, I (gyptologie), I (1959), pp. 49-51 and
references.
200
E.g. R. O. Faulkner, Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (1962), p. 73, the first four variant writings under
wdhw.
201
Ibid., fifth variant writing.
202
Cf. G. Posener, Revue dgyptologie, XI, 1957, pp. 121, 233 and n. 1.
203
P. Chassinat II; Posener, ibid., XII, 1960, pp. 77, 81-82 (late period spelling of Hnty-k and nk; but a Middle-
Egyptian text).
204
Cf. for example, the book Subduing of the Nobility, and even more the Ritual of the Royal Ancestors (refs.,
cf. H. W. Fairrnan in S. H. Hooke (ed.), Myth, Ritual and Kingship (1958), pp. 89-90, 100-104).
(2) Orthographic changes can come about piecemeal, following on even long after phonetic
changes, and can leave obvious inconsistencies.
205
After a suitable interval of time, scribes
accustomed to write in the orthography of their own day will be found also to use their own
customary spelling conventions in copying out a long-transmitted text, completely or
otherwise. All this is simply natural (even unconscious) revision, not dogmatic policy. The
Ptolemaic texts, however, present an example of deliberate revision of spelling in texts, but in
their case to keep the contents from the knowledge of outsiders, instead of (as with most other
examples of change) to make the written and spoken word agree more closely for easier
comprehension.
Needless to say, similar orthographical phenomena can be found in other parallel Near
Eastern literatures, e.g. the cuneiform texts of Mesopotaniia, and even in those of the
Hittites.
206
Of early Aramaic transmitted literature outside the Old Testament, we have little
besides Ahiqar. So far, our only early Aramaic MS of Ahiqar (as opposed to all the very late
post-Christian versions) is that from among the fifth century papyri found at Elephantine.
207
Its orthography is that of those fifth-century documentsbut no-one today would suppose
that Ahiqar and story and wisdom were invented only in the fifth Century BC. Apart from the
references to Assyria and the kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon in the text, Ahiqar himself is
now attested within later cuneiform tradition as an ummanu, scholarly adviser, serving
Esarhaddon in the seventh
[p.66]
century BC.
208
This, with the general considerations already put forward by the Assyriologist
Meissner, and Olmstead,
209
indicates a seventh-century date for the origins of the Ahiqar
narrative and wisdom.
210
Hence, the orthography of the fifth century BC is unlikely to be
wholly the original orthography of a seventh-century originaland if some day we ever come
into the possession of a copy of the third to first centuries BC (contemporary, say, of the
earlier Dead Sea Scrolls), it will be interesting to see whether such a copy has anomalously
preserved a fifth-century orthography (mainly z, q, etc., rarely d, , etc.) oras one would
expect on the analogy of the rest of Near Eastern usagehas taken on an orthography like
that of Daniel or the Genesis Apocryphon.
In the light of the comparative evidence briefly sampled above, it should be obvious that
orthographic change (sometimes revision, sometimes more gradual) is normaland the
onus of proof lies on those who would maintain that the Aramaic text of Daniel or Ezra could

205
Exactly like rq and r in Je. 10:11 (a fact unknown to Rowley, AOT, p. 24, citing Jeremiah).
206
In Hittite, it is commonplace to have documents composed in the eighteenth-fifteenth centuries BC preserved
in tablets showing late (i.e. fourteenth-thirteenth century BC) script and spelling; e.g. old and late ductus in
the Hittite Laws (H. G. Guterbock, JCS, XV, 1961, pp. 64-65), or the Anittas text (H. Otten, Mitteilungen der
Deutschen Oriene-Gesellschaft, LXXXIII, 1951, pp. 43-44).
207
Recent translation, H. L. Ginsberg, in ANET
2
, pp. 427-430; literature, cf. Koopmans, Aramische
Chrestomathie I (1962), pp. 136-145.
208
See J. J. Van Dijk in H. Lenzen, XVIII. Uruk Vorblufiger Bericht (1962), pp. 45, 51-52. The reasons for a
fifth-century date given by F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die Aramische Sprache unter den Achaimenitien, I (1963),
p. 185, are superficial and erroneous, and ruled out by the new Uruk reference, the use of Aramaic by Assyrian
officials, and the vagueness of hyl.
209
B. Meissner, Das Mrchen vom weisen Achiqar (Der Alte Orient, XVI.2, 1917), pp. 26-32. A. T. Olmstead,
JAOS, LVI, 1936, p. 243 and references; W. von Sodens suggestions in ZA, XLIII, NF IX, 1936, pp. 9-13, are
now rendered somewhat obsolete by the Uruk text.
210
Note also J. C. Greenfield, JAOS, LXXXII, 1962, pp. 292-293, 297-299.
not or did not fare similarly in similar circumstances.
211
In the case of Ezra, we are dealing
with documents related to Persian officialdom preserved in a literary work (hence their trans-
mission). Despite the imaginings of a Torrey, there is no factual warrant whatever for denying
the authenticity of the Ezra material and its origin in the fifth Century BC;
212
the assumption
of orthographic change during literary transmission is here obligatory.
As for the date of orthographic change in Daniel (on any sixth/fifth century dating, but not on
second-century basis) and Ezra, nothing compels us to put it quite as late as the second
century BC. It is very probable that Imperial Aramaic retained its historical orthography in the
main well beyond c. 399 BC, the latest date among the Elephantine papyri.
213
The recently
discovered Samaria papyri should throw light on the period c. 375-335 BC; one fragment
shows the historical orthography with z in znh, this, for phonetic dnh,
[p.67]
c. 370 BC.
214
One may thus assume that the historical orthography persisted in official use
while the Persian Empire existed,
215
with a gradual infiltration of phonetic spellings like those
of the fifth-century papyri. But when Alexander and his successors took over the Orient by
330 BC and following, the role of Aramaic as the language of government must have declined
visibly; the official tongue of the new rulers was Greek. Nothing now would bind all users of
Aramaic in different regions to an official habit, and for greater intelligibility a reduction of
orthography to match spoken usage would set in.
216
In the third century BC and certainly after
it, when the documents of daily life must have been written in an ever more phonetic
orthography, only inherited literature such as Ezra or Daniel (if older) would still have existed
in an outdated orthography whose continuance would be an increasing bar to ready
intelligibility. The impulse to use newer, more familiar spelling would eventually be
irresistible and would need no special sanction.
What, then, is the significance of all this? Simply that we have no inherent right to assume
that the present orthography of the Aramaic of Daniel requires a second-century date for the
original composition of that Aramaic text. Certainly, if the book was composed at that time,
then only restricted variations would have been possible (e.g. in vowel-letters; and s). But in
reality there is no factual reason for preferring this view to the possibility that this Aramaic
text was composed in the third, fourth, fifth or late sixth century BC and underwent
orthographic changes that are not the invention of theological conservatives
217
but are the
common fate of all such transmitted literature in times of linguistic change. Henceprecisely

211
I.e. apart from the lesser variation of h/ still visible in the Dead Sea Scrolls; Rowleys position in AOT, p. 24,
is thus belied by the comparative evidence.
212
There is no space here for a digression upon this topic.
213
P. Brooklyn 13, cf., BMAP, pp. 113, 283.
214
Cf. F. M. Cross, BA, XXVI, 1963, p. 115 and pp. 110-121 generally, and p. 111 with pp. 120-121.
215
A modicum of uniformity across the Empire was necessary for mutual intelligibility when Aramaic was being
used by officials and others from so many different linguistic backgrounds.
216
Wherever Aramaic really was a living language of everyday speech. But the opposite, of course, will apply
wherever Imperial Aramaic was merely a written medium, not spokenhere it tended to be mainly fossilized in
its Imperial orthography without a body of customary Aramaic speakers to bend it to current speech. This is well
illustrated by the survival of z-forms in Iran, India (e.g. Taxila) and elsewhere. Although Nabataean is so late
(second-century BC ff., cf. J. Starcky, BA, XVIII, 1955, p. 89), itbeing principally a written language in the
hands of Arab speakers (cf. J. Cantineau, Le Nabaten II (1932), pp. 179-180)sometimes retains a z in the old
tatters of Imperial orthography.
217
E.g. gdbr hypercorrected from gzbr.
as with the main Semitic vocabulary-stock and with the loan-wordsa time-range of the late
sixth to second centuries BC remains open, and any choice of date within this period must be
made on other grounds.
[p.68]
C. GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX
1. Morphology. Here also, a condensed treatment must suffice. Rowleys evidence on
morphology (and syntax) is far less significant than he thought, and most of it is not a matter
of morphology at all, but again of orthography and phonetics, as considered above. His
mechanical listing and treatment of differences (e.g. between Biblical Aramaic and that of
the papyri) is thus misleading. Again, grossly inadequate statistics have been pressed into
service (based upon mere units or tens of words instead of upon thousands), and the fallacy of
negative evidencea fallacy capable of illustration from discoveries since 1929. Most of the
evidence adduced is invalid, as far as a late date for the Aramaic of Daniel is concerned,
inasmuch as it falls into the following categories,
218
with reasons stated.
(1a) Purely orthographic variation in use of vowel-letters. Rowley, V:4 (HSD, 111:3):
variation in use of h/ at end of we (nhna), without significancesee on vowel-letters, pp.
58-59 above.
(ib) Defective spelling in papyri, full (pln) spelling in Daniel (and Ezra). R., V:I (HSD,
111:2:); V:4

(HSD, III:3); V:8; VI:I; X:2; X:18. In every case, an ending (or form, X:18) in
Daniel is written with a vowel-letter (h, , y) where the papyri generally write none.
This, too, has no chronological value except for the history of orthography.
219
The forms in
the Aramaic of the papyri and of Daniel were phonetically identical, as shown by tell-tale
variants in the papyri: they sometimes use a pln spelling of exactly the same type as is
found in the Aramaic of Daniel (e.g. -yn for - n, VI: 1). Schaeder appropriately pointed
220
to
an exact parallelismhhwyn//hhwynin AP, nos. 30:16 and 31:15, these being the draft of a
document and its contemporary duplicate. If -n is to be counted later in Daniel, it should also
be counted as centuries later in AP, no. 31! This, of course, is impossible. And in fact, there is
no difference in any of these points between the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra) and that of the
sixth/fifth centuries BC except in orthographywhich (as already plainly shown) reflects the
textual transmission of a literary work (not necessarily its date of composition), in contrast to
the once-for-all point in time occupied by a nonliterary everyday or official document.
[p.69]
(2) Forms common to the papyri (and sometimes Old Aramaic), Daniel (and Ezra), and the
late sources (Nabataean, Palmyrene, Targums, etc.). R., V:7; V:11; V:12; V:15 (HSD, III:4);
VII:1-8; VIII:1 (HSD, V:4); IX:1 (HSD, V:7); IX:3; IX:4 X:3, 5, 6; X:7 (hith-, ith-); X:9

218
For brevitys sake, Rowleys works will be cited by Section (Roman numerals) and points (Arabic numbers)
from pp. 50-106 of AOT; parallel sections and points from his paper in HSD will be prefixed in brackets by the
abbreviation HSD.
219
As Rowley will admit in a case where chronology is not involved (cf. his VII:2, where defective
orthography is recognized as such).
220
Cf. his discussion in Iranische Beitrge I, pp. 240-242 [42-44].
(HSD, IV:4); X:10 (HSD, IV:5); X:11 (HSD, IV:6); X:12 (if valid at all); X:13 X:18 (HSD,
IV: 9); X:19, 20. Here, time and again, we have examples of a form attested at once in
Daniel/Ezra Arainaic, and both in the papyri (and even Old Aramaic) and in the late sources.
In cases of this kind, their evidential value is absolutely nil: they show merely that certain
forms were known in the sixth/fifth centuries BC (or before) and persisted for many centuries.
On such a basis, the Aramaic of Daniel could be of any date from the sixth century BC
onwards.
In the case of V:15

and IX:4, new evidence has come to light since 1929. At that time, In for
these (V:15) was attested only in Daniel and the late Palmyrene.
221
But since then, the Old
Aramaic treaty-texts from Sfir in N. Syria, of the eighth century BC, have yielded some
fourteen examples of ln
222
it is, therefore, an old form, which has survived (i) in Corpus
Inscriptionum Semiticarum II, III:5 and Daniel, and (ii) in Palmyrene.
In IX:4, the accusative particle yt
223
is a classic example of the fallacy of negative evidence,
i.e. the apparent non-attestation of a form in early documents. In 1929, the form ytoutside
Danielwas known only from the late Nabataean and Palmyrene texts; Old Aramaic had a
different form, and the Imperial Aramaic of the papyri apparently none. But in Papyrus
Brooklyn 3:22a, the particle yt is now attested from the fifth century BC,
224
and is unlikely to
have been invented for that particular document. As for VII:3 (dyn, then), its form in Daniel
agrees with that of the papyribut in the Targums this word shows the quite different
orthography hydyn. Yet this kind of difference, upon which Rowley laid such stress in other
cases when it helped to show differences between Daniel and the papyri, is suddenly
discounted by him as a mere question of orthography when it comes to Daniel being different
from the Targums! This smacks of plaidoyer. (Again, the Targumic h-k and especially hyk d
(also in Palmyrene) were held by Rowley (p. 72) to differ but littlei.e. insignificantly
from the h-kdy of
[p.70]
Daniel (VIII:5). But this is a greater difference than many of the other distinctions that
Rowley made between items in Daniel and the papyri and listed as real differences when it
was solely a matter of orthography. For late btr as compared with btr (VIII:3), note the
occurrence of btr as an ideogram in Pahievitaken over from the Imperial Aramaic of the
sixth-fourth centuries BC via its fossilized use in the chancelleries of Seleucid and Arsacid
Iran, before becoming an ideogram.
225
The omission of a quiescent is far less than the
differences between Daniel and the Targums (VIII:5) just quoted.)
In X:7, 9, alternation of h and in preformatives for reflexive and causative verb-forms claims
attention; Rowley gave too little weight to the agreement of Biblical Aramaic with Old and
Imperial Aramaic in commonly having h in the causative (as opposed to Pahnyrene, Targums

221
With one solitary exception from Persia, Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarwn, II (1889), III:5 (AOT, p. 56).
222
Full references in A. Dupont-Sommer, Les Inscriptions Aramennes de Sfir (1958), p. 140, s.v.
223
Apodictically termed late by H. L. Ginsberg, JAOS, LXII, 1942, p. 231bnegative evidence again!
224
BMAP, p. 163.
225
Cf. R. N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia (1962), pp. 146-149; date of ideographic use of Aramaic in Pahlevi, cf.
F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die Aramische Sprache unter den Achaimeniden, I (1963), pp. 4-74, for a later date of
change from Aramaic properly written to ideographic use than has commonly been supposed. On Pahlevi, see
H. S. Nyberg, A Manual of Pahlevi, I (1964). References for btr, C. F. Jean and J. Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des
Inscriptions Smitiques tie lOuest, I-II (1960), pp. 45-46.
and in part Nabataean, with ), while duly noting (pp. 94/95, i) the usage with the reflexive
(both h and ) in Daniel as different from the papyri (using ). But the plain fact is that both h
and forms are old; Rowley himself quotes the forms from Zincirli and Neirab respectively
(p. 80). Where only a handful of each form is available both in Biblical Aramaic and in the
papyri, etc., statistical treatment is useless, especially if any orthographic change has
occurred.
226
Items like X:13 are wholly indecisive; if assimilation and non-assimilation of initial radical n
are both attested both early and late, they prove nothing because they could as easily be
considered a residual archaism (cf. Zakir, no n; Neirab with n, etc.) as a late mark (e.g.
Palmyrene, no n; Nabataean with n, etc.).
(3) Historical orthography, in particular z for d, from d: R., V:11, 13, 14, 16. This point needs
no further treatment; see above, pp. 53-55. On V:11, cf. also paragraph (4) below. As for
V:14, d, this, precisely this form occurs in the phonetically-written DemoticAramaic
papyrus of the fifth century BC; appeal to Nabataean and the Targums, therefore, proves
nothing whateverexcept long use.
(4) Anomalous forms, so far unique to Daniel. R., V:11 (HSD, 111:7) on dkn; VIII:4; VIII:5
(HSD, V:5; Heb. ngd); X, 21, 22. Forms otherwise unattested, early or late, have no
evidential dating-
[p.71]
value whatever, because their external occurrence cannot (yet) be controlled. In VIII: 4, the
form in Daniel (meaningless z/d apart) differs only in having t (dbrt) from the l-dbr-zy of the
papyri; ngd in VIII:5, being a Hebraism, has no significance, as everyone admits that the
author was a Hebrew, whatever his place and date. Hn, if, goes back to Old Aramaic as well
as the papyri;
227
lhn, except, is in the papyri;
228
bgyn is merely negative evidence.
Irrelevant in practice, as Rowley admitted, are VI:2, 3Palmyrene rarities not attested in
Daniel; similarly, X:4, 8.
All the foregoing material is irrelevant to the date of the Aramaic of Daniel, as it could be
early or late. Now we turn to material that is more apparently early or late.
(5) Material found only in Biblical Aramaic and older sources (Old Aramaic, papyri, etc.) is
listed by R., VII: 1-8. As he noted, several of these terms and forms survive into the Targums
but are not found in Nabataean and Palmyrene. This affects VII:2, 4, 6; I (if ken (p. 69) be
compared with knt), 8 (indirectly), and 3 if Rowley be allowed to discount orthography, for
once, in his own interest.
This leaves VII:5

(different to Targumic tmn, whose occurrence in an Egyptian ostracon is
strictly irrelevant to Daniel), and VII:7 (HSD, V:10) as so far early only. As for VII:9

(HSD,
V:11), tnynwt in Daniel should be compared with tnyn of the papyri (AP, nos. 70:7; 63:73).
One may add IX:2, lw, lo; the alternation of h and need be worth no more here than
elsewhere.

226
See on this matter Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge, I, pp. 249-250 (51-2].
227
Cf. Jean and Hoftijzer, op. cit., p. 66 meaning (2).
228
Cf. ibid., III, p. 235.
This leaves us withat lastseveral items of apparently rather sounder evidential value for a
relatively late dating of the Aramaic of Daniel than the mass of irrelevant matter so far
eliminated.
(6) Apparently Late Criteria. (a) Illusory lexical and phonetic examples. Under VIII: 2, the
form thwt, under, is contrasted with tht of the papyri, and noted as occurring in the Targums
(p. 72)but this form thwt is now (since 1953) known from the papyri too (P. Brooklyn
6:70). It therefore belongs in section 2, above (common forms).
Under X:16, the verb slq in Daniel is observed to assimilate the l as in Palmyrene, once
having a compensatory n. This assimilation already occurs in Old Aramaic in the eighth
century BC,
229
while for n, probably compare P. Brooklyn 6:10.
230
(b) Pronominal Forms that add n, or substitute it for the m of the papyri, cf. R., V:5, 6, 9, 10;
X:1.
The origins of such forms as hmwn for older hmw; -kwn, -hwn, etc.,
[p.72]
have already been perfectly adequately explained by Schaeder,
231
whose treatment it is
needless to repeat here. He notes the occasional occurrence of-n forms of suffixes in the fifth-
century papyri,
232
which show that, by then, these had already become part of spoken
Aramaic, and so occasionally pierced the older and customary orthography of the papyri. In
other words, where before we had historical and phonetic orthographies, here we have older
and later grammatical forms. And, as Schaeder also notes, in the transmission of Ezra and
Daniel the later forms of current speech and of everyday writing (i.e. of the third century BC
and later) have begun to make an impact on Ezra, and have replaced wholly the older form in
Daniel, giving Old Testament scholars the superficial impression that the Aramaic of Daniel
is younger than that of Ezra.
233
The change in pronominal forms has gone further in Daniel
than in Ezra, but this does not automatically prove that such was already the case when the
Aramaic parts of these books were actually composed. For, in fact, grammatical and
morphological change (and not only orthographical) not only can but did take place in
Ancient Near Eastern textual transmission. Thus, a third-second century date for the Aramaic
of Daniel could be retained, under the onus of having to prove that no morphological changes
have occurred in the transmission of the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra). An earlier date (sixth-
fourth centuries BC), assuming such change to a limited degree, is at any rate in harmony
with observed facts of Ancient Near Eastern textual transmission.

229
Sfir texts: A. Dupont-Sommer, Les Inscriptions Aramenes de Sfir, p. 247, s.v.
230
Cf. BMAP, p. 196 top; contrast no. 9:15.
231
Iranische Beitrge, I. pp. 250-252 [52-54].
232
Ibid., p. 250 [52], and n.3 adding an example to those of Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, p. 105(b).
233
Cf. (e.g.) Baumgartner, op. cit, pp. 120-222, more cautious than Renan; and Rowley, AOT, pp. 55, 254 (also
cautious).
As with orthographic changes, one may turn to a better-documented area of literature in the
Biblical world for some examples of this phenomenon; again, Egypt is convenient (but not
unique).
234
The Instruction of Ptahhotep in Egypt is one of the older wisdom-books in a long series. It is
now generally accepted that it indeed originated in the late Old Kingdom (Fifth-Sixth
Dynasties, c. 2400 BC),
235
showing clear traces of its Old Kingdom origin.
236
However,
[p.73]
this book, which must then have been composed in Old Egyptian, underwent not one but two
revisions of grammatical structure: (i) Papyrus Prisse of c. 2000 BC is Middle Egyptian rather
than Old, while (ii) the other MSS show a fuller Middle Egyptian form and text-tradition.
237
Again, the Instruction of Aniy is a good Eighteenth Dynasty work, in formal Middle Egyptian,
but the Berlin Museum tablet no. 8934 accompanies its Middle Egyptian text with a Late
Egyptian version (broken off after the title).
238
Cf. the same phenomenon in the Ritual for
Repulsing Evil, a text provided with a version in later Egyptian.
239
In the foregoing cases, we probably have examples of fairly consistent modernization, rather
as Schaeder considered likely for the Aramaic of Daniel. Less deliberate change also took
place, of course. If we possessed only the Ashmolean Ostracon MS of Sinuhe in Egyptian,
written out in the Ramesside period (c. 1300-1100 BC), and applied the methods and
viewpoints of a Rowley or a Baumgartner, then a fifteenth to early thirteenth century date
(BC) for Sinuhe (and a pseudepigraphic origin, 600 years after the date suggested by
statements in the text) would seem every bit as certain as the second-century date appears for
Daniel on the linguistic grounds offered by these scholars. However, we have for Sinuhe what
we lack for Daniel (and for all Old Testament writings): really early MSS, in the case of
Sinuhe reaching back to c. 1800/1700 BC, within 150 years of the composition of the original
text near the end of the twentieth century BC. These MSS show (i) that Sinuhe is so much
earlier, and (ii) that the late features of the Ashmolean Ostracon text are simply the result of
long manuscript transmission and some modernization; they date that MS, not Sinuhe.
240
A
text composed later than Sinuhe is The Sporting King, not earlier than Amenemmes II (c.
1900 BC) whom it concerns; but our sole and late MS (end of Eighteenth Dynasty, late

234
Leaving aside the vast province of Mesopotamian cuneiform, one should note the widely admitted and
attested practice of grammatical modernization in even the much smaller province of Hittite cuneiform. Some
random examples: A. Goetze, JCS, XVI, 1962, p. 24b, in 1 (Deeds of Hattusil I); H. Otten, Mitteilungen der
Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, LXXXIII, 1951, pp. 43-44 (Deeds of Anittas), besides orthography.
235
Cf. (e.g.) the six scholars named by Fecht (see next note), p. 50, n.1.
236
G. Fecht, Der Habgierige und die Maat in der Lehre des Ptoizhotep (1958), pp. 49-50.
237
Cf. the convenient layout of parallel texts in Z. ba, Les Maximes tie Ptahhotep (1956).
238
Cf. (e.g.) E. Suys, La Sagesse dAnii (1935), pp. vii, 1;G. Posener, Revue dgyptologie, VI, 1949, p. 42 and
n.2.
239
S. Schott, Die Deutung tier Geheimnisse ties Rituals fr die Abwehr des Bsen (1954); note also the Demotic
version of parts of older, Middle Egyptian texts in P. Carlsberg I (e.g. Parker, Revue d gyptologie, X, 1955, pp.
49-59).
240
For Sinuhe MSS see G. Posener, Littrature et Politique dane l gypte de la XII
e
Dynastie (1956), pp. 87-88
and references. On a couple of late elements (among others) in the Ashmolean Ostracon, cf. my Ancient Orient
and Old Testament, part I:B, Section 5, (ii), b:i, apud principle III.
fourteenth century BC) in this case preserves the Middle Kingdom forms throughout.
241
Thus,
an earlier
[p.74]
work (Sinuhe) can easily appear with linguistic forms that are younger than those preserved
for a later composed work (The Sporting King)just as may be the case with Daniel and Ezra.
Why is this? Simply, in the case of Sinuhe and The Sporting King, because the one work was
more widely used and copied, and had more circulation, than the other. We have several
major MSS of Sinuhe and a crowd of ostraca,
242
but, so far, only the one MS of The Sporting
King.
243
So, it is just as possible that Daniels graphic narratives and intriguing visions were
more often read and recopied than the drier and more prosaic doings of Ezra and his
predecessors. In other words, forms like hmwn date themselves rather than the text in which
they occur, and so leave the date of Daniel open for consideration on other grounds.
(c) Other Forms. In the Peal Imperfective, yd, to know, shows an n before d (R., X:15),
which is also a less well attested use elsewhere. It is practically absent from early and late
sources alike, apart from limited occurrence in (e.g.) the Targum of pseudo-Jonathan.
244
But a
possible example of the form mnd in the Ahiqar papyrus
245
should warn us that, in fact, this
item really belongs in section (2) abovei.e. is both early and late, and so useless.
2. Syntax. Syntax offers, as Rowley rightly remarked, few differences of any importance. Of
his various points (section XI in his AOT, pp. 98-108), XI:1(i), (iii)a, 2, 3(b), 6 and 7, all fall
under the same judgment as 1, section (2), above, attested in early sources (Old Aramaic and
papyri) as well as late (Targums, etc.), this robbing them of all evidential value.
The points left over (XI: I (ii), (iii)b, c, d; 4, 5) are no better, for the following reasons.
In XI:1, item (ii) is restricted to a couple of occurrences in the papyri (AP, 41:3 twice) and is
thus irrelevant; (iii)b is irrelevant, because limited to Pahnyrene; (iii)c, d, are so rare in
Biblical Aramaic (c: 3 in Ezra, I in Daniel; d:1 in Ezra, 2 in Daniel) as opposed to Palmyrene
that they prove nothing at all.
In XI:4

and 5, the trend of the facts is clearly against Rowleys position, largely as a result of
discoveries since 1929. As for XI:4, the preposition l before a kings name in dates is a mark
of early date. In all the Cowley papyri, it occurs once: in the oldest document, dated to year
27 of Darius I, c. 495 BC.
246
This is no fluke; cf. now the Meissner papyrus (line 1) from year
7 of Darius I (c. 575 BC, within 22 years of the earliest possible date for the book of Daniel:
[p.75]
3rd year of Cyrus, 536 BC).
247
As late as 457 BC (14th year of Artaxerxes I) the earliest
papyrus in the Brooklyn series uses l.
248
In all later documents, no l is so far attested before a

241
R. A. Caminos, Literary Fragments in the Hieratic Script (1956), p. 23.
242
See note 240, above, for reference covering most of these.
243
See n.241.
244
Cf. AOT, pp. 93-95, item (iv).
245
Ibid., p. 96, on (viii).
246
AP, no. 1, line 1.
247
Dupont-Sommer, Contrat tie Mtayage (1944).
royal name in datelines
249
this item in the Aramaic of Daniel, therefore, is as likely to be an
archaic survival as anything else, and to have found subsequent extension of use in a later
day, in Nabataean and Targums. In XI:5, again, the use of king before a royal name (Darius)
is attested by our oldest-available papyrus, P. Meissner of 575 BC. The use in Daniel is
parallel to such as this as much as to the Targums, which latter (being Jewish literature, after
all!) are more likely to have been influenced by Biblical precursors such as Daniel, and thus to
be without any independent value.
In fine, under Grammar and Syntax, there is nothing decisive in favour of an early or late date
for the Aramaic of Daniel. The late phenomena (restricted, in fact, to a mere n in certain
pronominal forms) are as likely to represent textual history as date of composition; most of
the supposed criteria are in fact invalid. One or two points would suit an early date, but are
indecisive; for word-order, see in the next section.
D. GENERAL AFFILIATIONS OF THE ARAMAIC OF DANIEL
The Aramaic of Daniel (and of Ezra) is simply a part of Imperial Aramaicin itself
practically undatable with any conviction within c. 600 to 330 BCa part which differs from
nearly
250
all the rest solely in being scribally transmitted literature and hence subject to
orthographic and allied changes. The old battles over Eastern or Western Aramnaic were a
waste of effort, for Imperial Aramaic antedates both, and offers no good evidence for such a
distinction.
251
Within Imperial Aramaic, it is tempting to classify this or that
[p.76]
minor peculiarity as hinting that this or that document shows E. or W. connections; but by and
large, this is still unconvincing. In Biblical Aramaic, word-order in sentences having finite
verbs is quite different from normal N.W. Semitic usage (verb subject etc.). Instead we
find the subject commonly first with the verb at the end of the sentence having the object
more often before than after it (i.e. subject object verb; or, subject verb object).
This stands in striking contrast to the Dead Sea Scrolls Genesis Apocryphon of about the first
century BC
252
and Targum of Job of the late(?) second century BC,
253
both of them

248
BMAP, no. 1, line 1.
249
E.g. a dateline from the Samaria papyri (fourth century BC) has no l; cf. F. M. Cross, BA, XXVI, 1963, p.
113.
250
Except, of course, Ahiqar.
251
Cf. already Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp. 123-124; Schaeder, Iranische Beitrge, I. p. 253 [55], cf. p.
228 [30]; summing up, Rosenthal, Aramaistiche Forschung, pp. 67, 70-71. Cf. also Dupont-Sommer on the
Assur Ostracon, Syria, XXIV, 1944-1945, pp. Rowley, AOT, pp. 15, 154 top, was conscious of this fact, but still
too bound to the old ideas. On p. 15, one sees again his confusion of orthography and phonetics, in line 13 from
top of pagefor phonetic, one should read orthographic; the idea that phonetic changes of this class in
Aramaic occurred in the West in the fifth century BC but in the East only in the second century BC is grotesque
and rests wholly on this confusion of orthography and phonetics (see his p. 13, n.1). The phonetic change had
come by the fifth century BC, while orthography long lagged behind.
252
Cf. E. Y. Kutscher, Scripta Hierosolymitana, IV (1958), pp. 33-34; F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die Aramische
Sprache unter den Achaimeniden I (1963) pp. 224-222.
253
On which date see J. van der Ploeg, Le Targum de Job de Ia Grotte II de Qumran (1962), p. 7. For the word-
order in this document, cf. the extract illustrated and printed on the plate, pp. 8-9.
embarrassingly close in time to a supposedly second-century Daniel.
254
But it agrees well with
the word-order of the Assur ostracon of the seventh century BC,
255
and with the freedom of
order in the fifth-century Aramaic papyri from Egypt.
256
The origin of the phenomenon lies in the Eastin Mesopotamia, following the model of
Akkadian in which the verb normally falls at or near the end of the sentence.
257
However, this
merely proves that the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra) belongs to the early tradition of Imperial
Aramaic (seventh-sixth to fourth centuries BC) as opposed to later and local, Palestinian
derivatives of Imperial Aramaic (like the Scrolls cited), and not automatically that a Daniel
himself was under Babylonian influence in his writing. During the whole period c. 1200-630
BC, with Aramaean penetration into Mesopotamia, the Assyrian conquest of the Aramaean
states, and deportation of Aramaeans into Mesopotamia, there was plenty of time for this
Mesopotamian imposition on Aramaic syntax to take place in Mesopotamnia. When the
Mesopotamian-naturalized Aramaic became a chancellery-language for Assyrian, Neo-
Babylonian, and above all Persian government officials, it carried this mark everywhere. But
as a spoken language in Palestine, among Hebrews and perhaps other West-Semitic language-
stock, Aramaic reverted to the old syntactic pattern, visible in the Old Aramaic inscriptions of
N. Syria itself; outside of Mesopotamia and not populated by Akkadian-speakers. In view of
this and other considerations, several scholars today would consider an Eastern
[p.77]
(Mesopotamian) origin for the Aramaic part of Daniel (and Ezra) as probable,
258
in agreement
with the subject-matter, though absolute proof cannot be given within the relative unity of
Imperial Aramaic.
E. GENERAL RESULTS
1. Vocabulary: Semitic. As noted above (pp. 34, 35), nothing decisive on date is obtainable
here.
2. Vocabulary: Persian. Statistical appreciations of Persian loan-words (especially in relation
to survivals into the Targums, etc.) are worthless (pp. 36, 39, 40); the impact of Old Persian
upon Imperial Aramaic is very considerable. In the LXX versions, some four Persian words
are so poorly translated that their meanings must have been lost long beforehand; this would
argue for a date before the second century BC (pp. 42-43). The Persian words are Old Persian,
not Middle; this indicates no independent borrowing of Persian words into Daniel after c. 300
BC (pp. 43 f.). These facts suggest an origin for the Persian words in the Aranmaic of Daniel
before c. 300 BC.

254
Note also the reactions of van der Ploeg, op. cit., p. 24
255
Note A. Dupont-Sommer, Syria, XXIV, 1944-1945, pp. 57-58.
256
See Baumgartner, ZAW, XLV, 1927, pp. 129-230, on these.
257
Cf. W. von Soden, Grundriss tier A/dcadischen Grammatik (1952), 130 (pp. 183-185).
258
Cf. E. Y. Kutscher, Scripta Hierosolymitana, IV (2958), p. 2, opting for an E. origin of Biblical Aramaic
(within Imperial); his detailed reasons were to be given in a review-article in JAOS, on Aramaic Dialects and
the Problem of Biblical Aramaic, but this had not appeared at the time of writing. Cf. also van der Ploeg, loc.
cit. (n.254 above); Kutscher, Scripta Hierosolymitana, IV, p. 20, contrasting the usage of l in Imperial with
Biblical Aramaic, and the Genesis Apocryphon, with Western Aramaic; and F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Die
Aramische Sprache unter den Achaimeniden, I (1963), pp. 58, 207.
3. Vocabulary: Greek. Only three words (of one class: music) are involved. Greek wares
reached all over the Ancient Near East from the eighth century BC onwards; Greek
mercenaries and artisans served the Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar. Greek words occur in
Imperial Aramaic at the end of the fifth century BC (statr, probably drma?, just possibly
others), and there is nothing to stop them appearing earlier. It is unjustifiable to hold that
Greek words in Aramaic imply a date after 330 BC. Many Old Persian words alongside
hardly any Greek words in our text suggest a date in the Persian age; a document of
Hellenistic date with a penchant for loan-words should have taken them from Greek (or
Middle Persian). Hence, a second-century date cannot be based on three Greek words; a very
late sixth-century date is early enough for the body of Persian wordsbetween these dates no
greater precision is possible linguistically.
[p.78]
4. Orthography and Phonetics. Old and Imperial Aramaic texts started off with a Phoenician
orthography that, in some respects, only approximated to the phonetics of Aramaic as spoken;
sound-shifts in Aramaic within the eighth-fifth centuries BC turned these approximate
spellings into purely historical spellings. These phenomena are betrayed by sporadic phonetic
writings and false archaisms in Imperial Aramaic documents of everyday business. By
contrast, in Daniel and Ezra, which are scribally transmitted literary texts, the phonetic
changes have shown themselves in modernization (most probably unofficial, at least initially)
of spelling, probably in or after the third century BC. A second-century date could be held by
proving that no modernization had occurred, if that is possible (what of gzbr/gdbr?). In favour
of modernization is a case of hyper-modernization of a Persian word (gdbr), and by contrast
one case of a proper name surviving in an old form (because, being foreign, it had no meaning
beyond being a personal label). Orthographic modernization is quite commonplace in
Ancient Near Eastern literary transmission.
5. Grammar. Much of the supposed evidence on word-forms had to be dismissed because it
was merely a repetition of points raised under Orthography and Phonetics, and was
sufficiently dealt with under this head. One or two late forms are actually early. Only in the
pronominal forms is there any evidence for late formsand some of these are already
attested in the fifth century BCbut in the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra) they represent the
effect of (gradual?) modernization, the pressure of spoken, living language upon a scribally
transmitted literary text, exactly as elsewhere in the Ancient Near East. As with orthography,
so here, non-revision would have to be factually eliminated to certify so late a date as the
second century BC for composition.
6. Syntax. Most points here are irrelevant for dating-purposes, and two points that once
seemed peculiar are in all probability a mark of, or survival from, an early date (l before a
royal name in dates; use of king before a royal name). The word-order of the Aramaic of
Daniel (and Ezra) places it squarely in full-blooded Imperial Aramaicand in striking
contrast with real Palestinian post-Imperial Aramaic of the second and first centuries BC as
illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Beyond this, the Aramaic of Daniel (and Ezra) is neither
Eastern nor Western, simply Imperial that cannot be divided in this way; some hints would
point East, but do not constitute proof in themselves.
[p.79]
Summary. What, then, shall we say of the Aramaic of Daniel? It is, in itself; as long and
generally agreed, integrally a part of that Imperial Aramaic which gathered impetus from at
least the seventh century BC and was in full use until c. 300 BC, thereafter falling away or
fossilizing where it was not native and developing new forms and usages where it was the
spoken tongue. If proper allowance be made for attested scribal usage in the Biblical Near
East (including orthographical and morphological change, both official and unofficial), then
there is nothing to decide the date of composition of the Aramnaic of Daniel on the grounds
of Aramaic anywhere between the late sixth and the second century BC. Some points hint at
an early (especially pre-300), not late, datebut in large part could be argued to be survivals
till the second century BC, just as thirdsecond century spellings or grammatical forms must
be proved to be original to the composition of the work before a sixthfifth century date
could be excluded. The date of the book of Daniel, in short, cannot be decided upon linguistic
grounds alone.
259
It is equally obscurantist to exclude dogmatically a sixth-fifth (or fourth)
century date on the one hand, or to hold such a date as mechanically proven on the other, as
far as the Aramaic is concerned.
ABBREVIATIONS
For standard reference works and journals, the abbreviations adopted by The New Bible Dictionary
(1962) are employed. Other abbreviations are:
AK Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Karatepe (Erster Vorbericht) (H. T. Bossert), 1950
AOT The Aramaic of the Old Testament (H. H. Rowley), 1929
AOTBI
2
Altorientalische Texts und Bilder zum Alten Testament Vol. 2 (ed. H. Gressmann), 1927
AP Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (A. E. Cowley), 1923
ASc Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum, Reign of Ashur-nasir-pal, 885-860 B.C. (E.
A. Walls Budge), 1914
ASD III, IV Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli III, IV (F. von Luschan), 1902, 1911
BMAP The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (E. G. Kraeling), 1953
C II Carchemish II (C. L. Woolley), 1921
CAD The Assyrian Dictionary (ed. I. J. Geib et al.), 1956.
DAB The Development of Attic Black-Figure (J. D. Beazley), 1951.
DM Darius the Mede (J. C. Whitcomb), 1959
DTM Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires in the Book of Daniel (H. H. Rowley),
1935
GBA A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (F. Rosenthal), 1961
GO The Greeks Overseas (J. Boardman), 1964
HCC Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus (J. L. Myres), 1914
HGB A Handbook of Greek Black-Figured Vases (J. C. Hoppin), 1924
HSD Notes on the Aramaic of the Genesis Apocryphon (H. H. Rowley), pp. 116-129 of
Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to C. R. Driver (ed. D. W. Thomas and W. D.
McHardy), 1963

259
Some recent tendencies towards allowing a date for Biblical Aramaic earlier than the second century BC may
be mentioned in passing. Note, e.g., E. G. Kraeling, BMAP, p. 7; J. J. Koopmans, Aramische Chrestomathie, I
(1962), p. 154, by his classification includes Biblical Aramaic with fifth-century material; on a Mesopotamian
origin cf. J. van der Ploeg, Le Targum de Job de la Grotte II de Qumran (1962), p. 24. This new flexibility and
open-mindedness is welcome.
LAP Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri (R. Yaron), 1961
MAO Die Musikinstrumente des Alien Orients (M. Wegner), 1950
MS The Music of the Swnerians... Babylonians and Assyrians (F. W.Galpln), 1937
NB Nineveh and Babylon (A. Parrot), 1961
NI A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories (R. D. Barnett), 1957
OP Old Persian Grammar, Texts, Lexicon
2
(R. G. Kent), 1953
PTT Persepolis Treasury Tablets (G. G. Cameron), 1948
SA The Stones of Assyria (C. J. Gadd), 1936
UE II Ur Excavations II, The Royal Cemetery (C. L. Woolley), 1934
UM Ugaritic Manual (C. H. Gordon), 1955
1965 Kenneth A. Kitchen. Reproduced by kind permission of the author.
Prepared for the web in September 2005 by Robert I Bradshaw
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/

The Aramaic of Daniel: K. A. Kitchen

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K.A. Kitchen, The Aramaic of Daniel, D. J. Wiseman, ed., Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel.

London: The Tyndale Press, 1965. pp. 31-79.

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